tell my sister. I’ll tell her myself first thing in the morning. Can you wait that long?”
“Depends on who it is.”
Nice try. I wasn’t born yesterday. “Promise first.”
“Fine. I promise.”
“Alessandro Sagredo.”
Bug’s voice spiked. “Your virgin girl crush? The Italian Stallion?”
“Does everybody know that I had a thing for Alessandro?”
“Anybody who knows you. What did he do? Have you given up on pining from afar and decided to sweep him off his expensive cordovan leather loafers?”
I ground my teeth. “He killed my prime suspect.”
Silence.
“How?”
“He stabbed him in the heart. Less than five feet away from me.”
“Ohhh. That’s good. That’s too good. I’ve got to tell the Major.”
“Bug! Think way back, about two milliseconds ago, when you promised me that you wouldn’t tell?”
“You tricked me. I don’t know if I can hold it in. It’s too good.”
Argh. “Okay, you can tell Connor if you swear him to secrecy. He can’t tell Nevada. I’ll explain it to her myself, tomorrow morning. Can you do that?”
“I’ll try.”
“They’re asleep, anyway.”
Bug snorted. “The Major never sleeps. Sometimes he rests his eyes while thinking deep thoughts.”
“Connor is at his grandfather’s funeral trying not to murder his obnoxious family. He’s dealing with a lot right now, Bug. You don’t want to add to that, do you?”
“You always ruin things with your logic. Fine. Where was the fancy boy last seen?”
“Jumping out of a third-story window of the IFS.”
“Okay, I’ll give it to him, that’s pretty badass. I’m on it.”
“We haven’t discussed your fee.”
Bug moaned. “Catalina, I’m so fucking bored. Nothing is happening. Another day and I’ll pay you to hire me. At least this is something to do. With a face like that, he’ll be easy to find. I’ll call you when I learn more.”
He hung up.
“You know some weird people,” Runa said.
“It comes with the job. Are you okay?” I asked her.
“No, I’m pretty far from okay. My mother’s dead body tried to rip my hair out.”
There was nothing I could do or say to take that away from her.
“She loved us so much. I could go to my mom with anything, and she would make me feel better. He used her like she was a thing. Like she wasn’t even a person.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why?” she ground out. “I want to know why this happened.”
“We’ll figure out why. We learned two things already: your family was murdered, and their killer is powerful enough to compromise an AME.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Runa said. “It started weird and it keeps getting weirder, Catalina.”
“I told you this could get ugly when we started. Do you want to walk away, Runa? You still can, but there will be a point when we can’t stop what we started, and it’s coming up fast.”
“We didn’t start anything. Whoever killed my mom and my sister started it.” Runa swiped a tear from her eyes. Her teeth were clenched, her expression hard and angry. “But I’ll finish it. You have my word.”
Chapter 4
Houston traffic was murder. It took us twenty-five minutes to cover the distance we could have driven in fifteen if the streets were empty. Nobody tailed us, but still I couldn’t breathe right until we turned onto the road leading to the warehouse.
The security checkpoint, a squat armored building, was an eyesore, but when I finally saw it up ahead, I wanted to run out and hug it. Almost home.
“Catalina!” Runa yelled.
A truck horn blared. I nearly jumped up out of the seat. A delivery truck screeched to a halt on our right, from the access road. Another foot and it would have plowed into us. The driver waved his arms, his face skewed by anger.
I had run a stop sign. I knew the stop sign was there and I ignored it, because we were on high alert. There should have been a two-foot-high steel barrier obstructing that access road.
This was beyond ridiculous.
I stepped on the gas, drove up to the security booth, and rolled down my window. Kelly, a white man in his forties, with dark blond hair and a farmer’s tan, slid open the window and grinned at me. “Stop signs are there for a reason, Ms. Baylor.”
There should have been two people in the booth.
I had two choices. I could either chew him out in front of Runa and highlight exactly how incompetent we were, or I could let my mother, who oversaw our security, chew out his superior in private. I settled for the latter. “Raise all security barriers. No vehicles come in.”