“Dammit,” I hissed. Just like that, it was over. I’d lost my best lead.
“You crazy bitch!” the driver shouted.
But not my only lead.
I wiped my fingerprints from the empty gun out of habit before setting it down. Then I picked up the driver’s gun from the floor. I got out, strode around the van, and heaved open the driver’s side door so I could point the pistol straight at his face.
He was bleeding. He clutched his shoulder, sweat pouring down his face. I hadn’t noticed during the fire fight, but the man in the olive suit must have hit him.
“What’s this all about?” I growled.
No answer, and I was tired of playing games.
I pistol-whipped his bullet wound.
He screamed and cursed and clutched his shoulder. I waited until he was finished, gun pointed again at his head.
“Why did Jean-Baptiste send me here?”
He glared at me but didn’t answer.
To be honest, I couldn’t help feeling a grudging respect. You couldn’t buy that kind of loyalty. It left me no closer to any answers, though, and I needed to decide my next move fast. He’d bleed out if I didn’t get help soon, and then I wouldn’t be able to get anything from him. Besides, one of the neighbors must have heard the gunshots. So, my next move was to get us both out of here before the police showed up, and judging by the two bullet holes in the hood of the van, I’d have to steal some alternative transportation.
At least that part would be easy.
Chapter 7
“Hang in there,” I said, glancing to my right as I sped down the road.
Jean-Baptiste’s man sat in the front passenger seat, his head leaned back against the headrest and his eyes closed. I’d taken off his suit jacket and wrapped it around his shoulder as a makeshift tourniquet, but he needed serious medical attention. His ragged breathing made me press the gas pedal harder even though it meant a huge risk of getting pulled over, especially since I couldn’t mind-control my way out of an arrest. I just needed him to survive long enough for my powers to return. I couldn’t read his mind if he died.
Why had Jean-Baptiste done this? I needed to know like a coke addict needed his next fix. What was his endgame? He must have been behind the attack in the Keys, too. Drugging me the day after couldn’t be a coincidence, and his men were skilled and experienced enough to orchestrate a hit like that. But again, why? What did he have to gain? He and I got along well, so payback couldn’t be his motive…could it?
I thought about all the things I’d done to him over the years and felt suddenly unsure.
No, even if I was wrong about our relationship, Jean-Baptiste was too practical to murder someone just because he didn’t like them. He did a serious risk-reward analysis before resorting to violence, and he wouldn’t need his ability to divine the future to know I would come after him if he failed. It was too risky a move for him—yet all the evidence indicated he’d done it.
A red light forced me to slow to a stop, and I drummed my fingers on the top of the steering wheel. Then I realized I couldn’t hear Jean-Baptiste’s man breathing.
I smacked him in the chest. “Hey! Stay with me.”
He jerked, his eyes fluttering open as he sucked in a weak, wheezy breath. “Can’t a man die in peace around here?” he groaned, sagging and letting his eyes fall closed.
“No,” I snapped. “Stay conscious. Talk to me. When you get out of this, what are you going to do to me in revenge?”
He took a shuddering breath, and the words came out like an exhale. “Well, I’ll probably start by shooting you.”
“That’s it?” The light turned green, and I floored it. “Not creative enough. You should stick something in the bullet wound after. What’s your preference? Rusty ice pick? Lit cigarette? Ground chili peppers?”
“Chili peppers,” he mumbled. “That sounds…good…”
“Don’t drift off, do you hear me? I’m not done with you yet.” I glanced at him as I sped down the road. Sunlight gleamed off a sickly sheen of sweat on his face, and the blood that had drenched his button-down shirt was now soaking the top of his slacks. My stomach grew heavy. I’d seen men in this state before.
“Were you on the boat?” I asked in a low voice.
He didn’t respond, so I smacked him again.
“The boat that opened fire on us last night,” I repeated. “Were you on it?”
“Hm?” His eyes cracked open for a second. “Yeah.”
My hands tightened on the steering wheel, and I looked resolutely ahead.
Twenty minutes later, I pulled up to the safehouse. The lawn was overgrown, but the large property and trees along the road kept it from being apparent to passersby. The house itself was modest and blocky, and the small windows had white hurricane shutters that doubled as a security measure. The walls were painted pale pink, matching a few plastic flamingos stuck in the grass. It would be the last place someone looked for me—or so I hoped.
Dr. Quevedo’s white Lexus sat in the driveway, so he must have come immediately after I had called him from a payphone earlier. It was a waste since his patient was dead next to me.
My legs felt heavier than usual as I got out of the car and trudged up the front walkway. The welcome mat was flamingo-themed, too, and I paused in front of it when I remembered Jean-Baptiste had taken my purse, so I didn’t have a key.
I knocked wearily on the door, and Irma opened it a moment later. She looked me up and down wordlessly with her sharp eyes.
“Tea?” she offered.
“Yes, please.”
I shuffled inside to find Dr. Quevedo sitting on the couch in the beach-themed living room, sipping a cup of what smelled like chai. He was a thin, elderly man with a snow-white beard, and he rose to his feet like a gentleman when I entered the room.
“Ms. Belmonte,” he greeted. “I hope everything is all right?”
“Yes,” I lied. “I’m sorry to call you out for no reason. Your patient died in the car on the way here.”
“Ah.” Dr. Quevedo’s eyes darted away in discomfort.
“Eddy!” Irma shouted from the kitchen, listening in. “Val needs you to dispose of a body! It’s in the car!”
“Sure thing!” Eddy called from somewhere in the back of the house.
“That can wait until dark,” I said.
“He should at least get it out of the car,” Irma said from the other side of the open bar that divided the kitchen and living room. “The temperature’s supposed to reach the high nineties today. Can you imagine the stink?”
“Point taken,” I said, throwing myself down in an armchair.
Dr. Quevedo’s posture tensed. We really shouldn’t talk about this stuff in front of him since he wasn’t a career criminal like the rest of us. He was a gambling addict, and about five years ago he’d gotten into debt to some very dangerous people. I’d paid it off for him, and about once a month, I went into his head and telepathically quashed his gambling urge. (In another life, I’d have made a hell of a therapist.) In exchange, he served as my private doctor for cases when going to the hospital would put me in legal trouble.
Usually, I had the comfort of being able to read his mind to make sure a sudden guilty conscience wasn’t about to spur him to squeal on my activities to the police. I couldn’t do that now, and while I was tempted to ask him to test how much exatrin I’d been injected with, so I’d know when it would wear off, I didn’t want to reveal that my powers weren’t working. Better for him to think I’d know the moment he had any traitorous thoughts.
Jean-Baptiste’s betrayal may have made me more paranoid than usual.
Elisa came out from her bedroom, looked at me, and frowned. Her forehead wrinkled, and I figured she was trying to ask me something telepathically and getting nothing in response. The exatrin had cut me off completely.
I gave her a look and chatted with Dr. Quevedo over tea so he wouldn’t feel like the trip here had been absolutely worthless (and also to give Eddy t
ime to get the body out of the car without the doctor seeing). Elisa sat on the couch to wait, and Irma moved around the room with a wet cloth, eavesdropping as she wiped up the accumulation of several months of dust that was standard for a seldom-used safehouse.
The conversation inevitably shifted to Dave’s condition.
“Just because the coma seems deep, that doesn’t mean there’s a smaller chance of recovery.” Dr. Quevedo tried to sound comforting, but he was so obviously nervous around me, stiff and sweaty in his chair. “The best indication is time. The longer he stays unconscious, the less likely he is to wake up.”
“He’ll wake up,” I said, trying to fight the sensation that my ribcage was collapsing in on my heart.
“O- Of course,” the doctor said quickly.
He had to wake up. He was strong, stronger than anyone I knew, and I didn’t mean how he could punch a hole in a brick wall. He would find his way back to me. The thought of the rest of my life stretching out before me without him in it…
“Ms. Belmonte?”
Dr. Quevedo was looking at me uncertainly. Had he said something?
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m not—”
Elisa had her phone out, her face scrunched up in concentration as she typed something.
“Who are you texting?” I asked sharply, startling the doctor.
Elisa glanced up guiltily. “Rosa.”
Of course. I shouldn’t have needed to ask. “You know you can’t say—”
“I haven’t told her where we are,” Elisa said quickly. “I’m just letting her know I’ll be out of touch for a while.”
Which wasn’t going to make their burgeoning relationship any easier. I hoped Rosa was understanding.
After a moment, I sighed. “Make it quick.”
Elisa nodded, the speed of her thumbs quickening as they darted across the screen.
After a painstakingly long fifteen minutes, I escorted the doctor to the door and returned to the living room where Elisa, Irma, and Eddy sat waiting for an explanation. I flopped back down into the arm chair and gave it to them in all the gory technicolor detail. When I finished, the frustration in my voice was evident even to my own ears.
“I can’t believe Jean-Baptiste,” Eddy breathed. “I used to like that guy.”
“Mm,” I agreed, still trying to wrap my head around it. I thought back to his henchman dying in the car. On the one hand, my best chance of getting to the bottom of this had died with him, but on the other, if he’d really been one of the shooters who had put Dave in a coma, I couldn’t regret his death.
I’d see to it that everyone on that boat ended up dead.
“What’s your next step?” Irma asked, stirring honey into her tea.
“I don’t know.” I ran my hand through my hair. “I don’t know why he’d do this. I still don’t even know if his target was Dave or me.” I leaned back, letting my arms fall onto the armrests. “But he didn’t finish either of us, so he’s going to try again. I have to take him out first.”
Dave’s slack face as he lay unconscious in the hospital bed flashed through my mind. I hated leaving him there, alone and vulnerable. It felt like a betrayal.
He’s not alone, I reminded myself. Bianca would make sure nothing happened to him. Nothing more than what had already happened, anyway.
“Good plan. Just one question.” The wrinkles on Eddy’s face deepened. “How do we kill someone who can see the future?”
Yeah, that was going to be a problem. Jean-Baptiste had precognitive abilities that specifically warned him of threats against his life. The flashes could come anywhere from days to minutes before the danger. Maybe if I could learn exactly what he foresaw the moment it happened, I’d be able to make a decent murder plot, but fat chance of that happening with no powers.
“We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” I said. “If Jean-Baptiste is smart, he’ll be avoiding his usual haunts. I need to know where he is first. I need security intel and building blueprints.” I rubbed my temples, feeling the void where my telepathy would usually be. “This is a hell of time to be on exatrin.”
“We can always get information the old-fashioned way.” Irma took a calm sip of tea. “Grab one of his henchmen, and I’ll put a knife to his balls until he talks. That usually works.”
“Sweet Jesus, woman.” Eddy crossed his legs. “Why is that your first suggestion?”
“It’s an option.” I shifted in my seat. “But I hope I can find a more elegant solution.”
I wasn’t a fan of torture. Moral issues aside, it was just so unreliable and inefficient.
“If you can get someone, I could try to read their minds,” Elisa said in a soft voice.
I went still, and Irma and Eddy watched carefully for my reaction. Not so long ago, I would have immediately shut down the idea with a shout loud enough to summon the police. Now… Elisa had been getting thrown into dangerous situations more and more often lately, and she’d handled them with aplomb.
“Not my first choice,” I said, “but we’ll keep it on the table.”
Elisa gaped at me for a second before nodding. She’d probably been expecting to have to argue her case—which in a reasonable world, she would. Was I seriously considering letting my teenage daughter invade the mind of a deadly criminal? I was supposed to be giving her a normal life.
But any chances of that had died when the boat exploded and her father had fallen into a coma. I’d failed her spectacularly.
“I hate to say it…” Eddy glanced between us. “But maybe we should take a page out of Dave’s book.”
Irma set down her teacup. “What do you mean?”
“Well, he’s a good guy, and we’re on the straight and narrow now, aren’t we?” Eddy gestured to us seated around the coffee table.
I raised my eyebrows. “Says the man who’s going to dump a body tonight.”
“My first in months. Look how far we’ve come.” He beamed proudly. “And we have contacts in the DSA now—you know, the schmucks whose job it is to keep an eye on crooks like the Prophet King. Maybe they could tell us what old Jean-Baptiste’s been up to.”
I stared at him as we contemplated that.
“You know,” Irma said, “that’s not a completely idiotic idea.”
“Can you believe what I have to put up with?” Eddy asked Elisa, putting a smile on her face. That he could make her smile at a time like this made me love Eddy all the more.
Since my phone was MIA, I borrowed Elisa’s and called Julio. It was a relief to have something I could do, since a lot of my hope had died with Jean-Baptiste’s henchman. I’d been optimistic about getting to the bottom of this when I’d first left to meet with Jean-Baptiste this morning, but instead of getting closer to finding the reason behind our attack, now I had a hundred more questions.
Julio picked up on the third ring. “Elisa?”
“It’s Val,” I said. “My phone died.”
“How’s Dave?” he asked immediately, his voice tense as if he feared the reason for my call.
“Fine—well, not fine, but there’s been no change. I was actually calling to ask about the Prophet King.”
There was a beat of silence, and when Julio spoke, his voice was close to a growl. “Was he behind it?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I answered honestly. “I met him this morning and…” Now I wavered on how honest to be. “Let’s just say I’m lucky to be talking to you now. Not even a day after the attack, I can’t believe it’s a coincidence.”
“I’ll look into it,” he swore.
The Prophet King was the city’s criminal kingpin, so it was no surprise that Julio, as Miami’s local superhero, loathed the man.
“And I appreciate that,” I said, “but I wanted to know if you have any recent intel on him. You have him under surveillance, right? Has there been anything unusual lately?”
Julio exhaled into the speaker. “I don’t know. With my hand broken, my boss has kept me on the publicity circuit. I’m out of the lo
op.”
Great. My jaw clenched in frustration, but then I had an idea. “What about Lagarde? She’s usually on top of things.”
He paused, and when the silence drew out, I wondered if Elisa’s phone had dropped the call. “Julio?”
“I’m here,” he said. “Nicole is…still on leave. She won’t be able to help.”
And those were the only two people in the DSA that I was on even remotely good terms with (and saying I was on “good terms” with Agent Nicole Lagarde was pushing it). I wanted to throw the phone across the room. Nothing was going right.
“You know where she is?” I asked. “I’d like to ask her, anyway.”
And it would have to be in-person where she couldn’t hang up on me. At the very least, she was a telepath whose powers were currently working. Maybe I could convince her to pry into Jean-Baptiste’s mind. Without a warrant. When she was a hard-ass, rule-abiding government agent with no sense of fun.
It wasn’t like I had any better ideas.
“I don’t know…” Julio said. He was being suspiciously hesitant.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I demanded.
Again, there was a long silence before he answered. This time, I waited it out patiently.
“The fight with Bloodbath really messed her up,” he said finally. “She’s having trouble dealing with it.”
I took a moment to parse that. Agent Lagarde had been with Dave, Elisa, and Julio in the theme park when Bloodbath had attacked. Unlike Dave and Elisa, she didn’t have super-strength, so after Bloodbath had gotten his hands on her, she’d had to be carried out on a stretcher. Dave had told me he’d thought she hadn’t survived at first. I didn’t know the details, but apparently, she was in for a long, hard recovery.
“You’ve been patient and supportive with her?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said forcefully, thinking I was criticizing him.
“Then let me talk to her. I’ll be rude and annoying as hell. It might just snap her out of it.”
“I don’t think that makes sense.” There was a muffled noise as I suspected he was readjusting his grip on his phone. “But I’m willing to try anything at this point.”
The White Knight & Black Valentine Series (Book 4): Kill Them All Page 6