The Lost (Celestial Blues, Book 2) - By Vicki Pettersson Page 0,20
because Kit, too, had a vested interest in knowing who killed Griffin Shaw.
The pad was raided.”
“What?” She allows the word to curl softly at the end, like the steam rising from her cup, the first of the day. And like the steam, there’s no mistaking the heat from its source.
Tomas answers quickly, working to deflect her anger before it’s even risen. “A girl came by early this morning. She called the cops.”
The woman curses in her native tongue, not caring that Tomas—American all the way back to his pasty, backwoods, pig-fucking grandfather—can’t understand. How, after she’s worked for a year getting everything in place, could something go wrong now?
“Why didn’t you stop her?” she asks, switching back to English.
“She looked like . . . somebody.”
“Somebody we know?”
There is a soft rustle on the other line, and she realizes Tomas is shaking his head as if she can see him. Idiot. Though she does have an ability to see things no one else can. She is blessed this way. It’s why she is who she is.
“No,” Tomas finally says. “Someone who would be missed.”
“Who is she?”
“I’ve never seen her before. She’s . . . different. Healthy. Has some money, too.”
Hearing another telling rustle, she can picture, with her talented mind, Tomas peering out the window of the small tract home, darting a quick glance at the street now littered with cops and flashing lights and this woman who’s called danger down upon them all. She can also feel his eagerness to leave—he needs to flee, with his record—but she hasn’t given him permission to do so.
And she won’t. Not yet.
“She’s outside now,” he says, scrambling for the information she wants. Anything so she will let him go. “She’s smoking and leaning against a fancy car.”
“What kind of car?”
“Not sure. Some vintage number with a soft top. Nothing ever meant to crawl the streets of this neighborhood.”
“Is she Law?”
“I don’t think so,” he answers. “She’s too . . . girly to be a cop. She looks like some sort of, I don’t know. Pinup girl.”
“I don’t care how attractive you find her,” the woman snaps. “I want to know if she’s dangerous.”
More rustling. “She’s Anglo, like me. Dark hair, loose curls. Slim. No, doesn’t look a bit martial.”
Neither do I, the woman thinks, gazing out her own window at the gray, empty street. “But she is motivated?”
“She broke a window and went inside by herself.”
By herself. What good is it to have a watchdog with no bite? Maybe she should show Tomas what teeth really look like. “And you just let her?” she snaps.
“She was after something.” No bite. Just a whine.
The woman sighs, and closes her eyes. There is nothing to be done with a man like this. Nothing but use him for his brawn, and eventually turn his greed against him. She remains silent for a long while, pondering just how to do that, knowing he’ll wait for as long as she wants.
“Follow her,” she finally says, opening her eyes.
“But the cops—”
She stops him there. “I want to know what she knows.”
This time he knows better than to argue. “Done.”
“Tomas.” The silence following his name is loaded. She knows he’s spoken to some of the other men, her countrymen. She also knows—they’d told her—that in their language she is sometimes called “mother” and “bride.” But to Tomas, she is the least motherly or maidenly woman he’s ever meet, and that’s how she keeps him tied to her, close, on a leash. “We’re too near to our goal to allow some random stranger to trip us up.”
“I know what to do.” And that’s why she keeps him at all.
“Make sure she doesn’t see you,” she says in parting, and waits for the answer that should have come. Of course. I’m not stupid. Nobody ever sees me.
Instead he says nothing. She curses silently, knowing then he’s already been seen, but she doesn’t call him on it. Instead she hangs up, letting him believe he’s won a little something with the deceit. She will allow him to follow this newfound trouble, and get the answers she needs first. It will allow her to remain hidden. Smoke and shadows, after all, are where she thrives.
She will take care of Tomas—who knows too much, yet does too little—after that. And the strung-out kid in the abandoned house that this useless man was supposed to be watching?
He’ll be considered lucky in comparison to Tomas’s coming fate.
Chapter Five
The Sierra Vista Rehab Center was located on a busy