Mission road - By Rick Riordan Page 0,34

forget what had happened to Lucia.

He’d do whatever he had to. The truth could never come out.

He drove across the dam and parked downhill on the utility road.

Late afternoon, the sky was dark and cloudy. Cold seeped into the car the moment he cut the engine. Through the trees, he saw the deck of the house, the windows glowing large and yellow like the eyes of an enormous predator.

He got out of his car and opened the trunk.

• • •

IN AN ALLEY BEHIND SAN FERNANDO Cathedral, Titus Roe opened his ice cream cooler.

He moved aside boxes of banana paletas until his fingers hit cold metal—the Colt .45 he had promised himself never to use.

He unfolded the paper Lieutenant Hernandez had given him and read the information again. Two addresses. One in town, one in Austin. The car’s make and color, with a license plate. A bad printout of a driver’s license photo and the woman’s name.

He folded the paper and put it back in his pocket.

He looked up at the rose window.

Retirement, he thought. One month and the bastard will stop hounding me.

He decided to start with the local address, go from there.

He muttered a silent apology to God and to the woman he didn’t even know.

Maia Lee.

• • •

ETCH HERNANDEZ UNLATCHED THE LONG BLACK case and assembled the pieces.

He tried the scope, saw nothing for a moment but fuzzy leaves. Then he readjusted the lens and saw Jaime Santos standing on his porch, still drinking his atole and watching the clouds.

How could the old man stand the cold?

Go inside, Etch thought.

But the old man stood his ground.

Santos had sold out an officer. He would be dangerous in court. Whatever happened now was his own damn fault.

Etch murmured Lucia’s name. He was hollow, nothing else inside him except her memory.

He lined the X-hairs on the old man’s chest, and exhaled as he squeezed the trigger.

“ARE YOU SURE THIS TIME?” I ASKED.

“Yeah,” Ralph said from the front seat. “That’s the bastard.”

Nothing is more embarrassing than siccing the mob on the wrong person. Ralph’s eyesight may have been laser-corrected, but thirty minutes ago at the Poco Mas Bar he’d mistakenly identified a burly Latino with a peroxide red buzz cut as one of the thugs who’d jumped him the night before.

We’d unleashed Madeleine White and watched the alleged thug get reduced to hamburger meat over the hood of the limo. The whole time, he swore up and down he didn’t know anybody named Zapata. Finally Ralph realized we’d screwed up.

We left the poor dude sixty bucks for a new shirt, called an ambulance and scrammed.

Now, after three more conversations with my street friends and several twenty-dollar bribes, we were parked across Roosevelt Avenue from Mission San José, watching another burly redheaded Latino order a burrito at Taco Shack #3. The dilapidated look of the place made me wonder what had happened to Taco Shacks #1 and #2. I imagined they were turning into fossil fuel in the sedimentary layers below.

I squirmed in my new black suit.

A hot shower with scented soap and designer shampoo hadn’t changed the feeling that I’d washed myself in grease, using a mobster’s bathroom. My borrowed silk slacks were too tight in the crotch. The shirt collar was stiff with starch. Sitting in the back of the limo with Madeleine White, I felt like I was on my way to the mafia prom.

“Too many people around,” Madeleine said, scoping out the scene. “I don’t want more blood on the car.”

“Sensitive type, aren’t you?” I asked.

She glared at me like she was about to kick me in the face again.

Screw it.

Now that I realized who she was, I couldn’t take her seriously.

I remembered her, all right. Frankie’s little sister.

When I’d known her before, she’d been a ten-year-old kid with a dirty blond ponytail, a shrill voice and painter’s pants decorated with Magic Markers. She always had bruises on her arms from getting into fights with her classmates. She used to sit in the bleachers during football practice and throw tennis balls at me. The coach never had the nerve to run her off because of her dad’s reputation. Frankie called her the Brat.

Now, she must’ve been pushing thirty, but she looked closer to twenty. Proof positive she had Guy White’s genes.

She didn’t stick out her tongue anymore, but her I-hate-you expression hadn’t changed.

“Listen,” she told me, “I don’t care if we draw attention. I’m not the one running from the police.”

I wished I had a good comeback, or maybe