Second Grave on the Left

  “But he said he’d never seen you, not in real life, so we just didn’t know if you really existed or not.”

  “I mean, c’mon,” Amador said, “a beautiful girl made of light? Which, by the way, I’m not really getting that part. I mean, you’re white and all.”

  Bianca hit him on the shoulder, then turned back to me. “The more Amador and I found out about him, the more we realized you probably did exist.”

  “So, he called me beautiful?” I asked, zeroing in on that one word.

  Bianca grinned. “All the time.”

  Wow. That was about the coolest thing I’d heard all day. Of course, it was still early, but I was there for a reason. After a heavy sigh, I blinked back and said, “I really and truly need to know where he is. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but if I don’t find him soon, he’ll die.”

  That brought the festivities to a screeching halt. “What do you mean?” Amador asked.

  “Okay, look, exactly how much do you know about him?” I needed a gauge of how much I could and could not tell them.

  Bianca bit her lower lip before answering. “We know that he can leave his body and go places. He has an amazing gift.”

  “He used to do it in prison. He’d learned to control it better by then, instead of it controlling him.”

  I never knew it did control him. That was interesting. Their knowledge and openness to Reyes’s ability would help me explain what was going on. “Reyes has decided that he no longer needs his corporeal body.”

  Bianca’s lovely brows slid together in concern. “I don’t understand.”

  I scooted to the very edge of my seat. “You know how he can leave his body?”

  They both nodded.

  “Well, he wants to be out of his body all the time. He wants to rid himself of it. He thinks it slows him down, makes him vulnerable.”

  A delicate hand covered Bianca’s mouth.

  “Why would he think that?” Amador asked, angry.

  “Partly because he’s a butthead.” I left out the other partly. No reason to tell them the whole truth. The knowledge that demons really existed could ruin their day. “He doesn’t have much time.” I looked at Amador pleadingly. “Do you have any idea at all where he might be? Anything?”

  Amador dropped his head in regret. “No. I haven’t heard a thing. When he woke up and walked out of that hospital, I thought for sure he would come here.”

  Bianca laced her fingers into his.

  “The cops thought that as well,” he continued. “They had the place staked out, and I realized he wouldn’t risk us by coming here after all.”

  He wasn’t lying, and I still had nothing. I wanted to cry. And kick and scream a little. I was going to kill Angel when all this was said and done. My only investigator and the only person I could trust to scour the streets incorporeally, and he hadn’t shown up in days. I was seriously considering firing him.

  “Can you think of anything, Amador?”

  He closed his eyes in contemplation. “He’s clever,” he said, his eyes still closed.

  “I know.”

  “No, he’s really clever. He’s a stone genius like I’ve never seen.” He opened his eyes again and looked at me. “How do you think we got this house?”

  I stilled, his question piquing my interest.

  “He studied the market while I was in prison with him, stocks and bonds, and he passed info through me to Bianca on what to invest in, when to pull it, and when to buy something else.”

  “He took my one thousand dollars,” Bianca said, “and made us millionaires. I was able to go back to school, and Amador opened his own welding and fabrications business when he was released.”

  “He’s everything to us,” Amador said. “And not just because of this.” He indicated his surroundings with a gesture. “You’ve no idea how many times he’s saved my life. Even before we were in the pen together. He’s always been there for me.”

  I was suddenly having a hard time seeing Amador assaulting anybody. He had a kind spirit, and I was willing to place a bet that he got into trouble protecting one of his own.

  “And he’s clever,” he repeated, suddenly deep in thought again. “He’s not going to hide from just anybody. He’s going to hide from you. He’s going to hide where he wouldn’t expect you to look.”

  “Charlotte,” Bianca said, her voice sad, “would you like some coffee?”

  Amador nodded in approval. “We were going to have to be up in an hour anyway.”

  “In that case…”

  Like dangling a carrot in front of a donkey. We sat in their kitchen and talked for the next hour about Reyes, about what he was like in high school, what his hopes and dreams had been. And shockingly, they all centered around me. Amador didn’t know much about Earl Walker, the man who had raised Reyes, abused him mercilessly, because Reyes refused to talk about him. But he did say Reyes didn’t kill anyone, including Earl. I wanted to believe that.

  Our conversation eventually wandered around to the Web sites. I told them about meeting Elaine Oake. Bianca giggled and cast curious glances at Amador.

  “Tell her,” he said at last with a smile.

  Bianca focused on me. “I didn’t have any money to invest when Reyes was studying the market, right? So he told me to call this woman who’d been trying to see him and who’d been offering the prison guards money to get information on him. And I did. I told her that my husband was his cellmate and that I could get her anything she wanted. She bought every ounce of information I had. Literally. With money. We were actually running out of things to tell her.” She laughed aloud. “That’s how I got the original thousand to invest.”

  “You sold information?” I couldn’t help but laugh with her.

  “Yes, but mostly insignificant details, nothing that could come back to haunt him. Every once in a while, Reyes told me to feed her something important from his past to keep her on the line. Still, there were a few things he didn’t want getting out that leaked through the guards. We had no idea how they were getting some of their information.”

  Ah, I think I knew one. “Was one of those about his sister?”

  Bianca cringed. “Yes. We have no idea how that leaked to a guard.”

  “Reyes never talked about her,” Amador confirmed.

  I was certain the U.S. marshals found out about Kim from one of those Web sites. Still, Amador was right. Reyes was ridiculously clever. Not that I didn’t already know that, but … Wait a minute. I studied him warily. “So, what about the pictures of Reyes in the shower?”

  “How do you think we got the down payment for this house?”

  My jaw dropped open. “Did Reyes know?”

  He laughed out loud. “It was his idea. He knew she’d pay big bucks for them, and he wanted us to have this house.”

  I sat stunned. He did it all for his friends. And yet he would have me believe he went around hurting innocent people? I doubted that now more than ever. But what if he died? Would he really lose his humanity? Was that even possible?

  I’d been hoping to gather some kind of hint as to where Reyes might be during our conversation, something that the Sanchezes were perhaps unaware they even knew, but nothing struck me as being particularly salient. I gave them a card and rose from the kitchen table. Amador rushed off to hit the showers as Bianca walked me to the door.

  “So, what did he say about me?” I asked her.

  She giggled and shook her head.

  “No, really. Did he mention my ass?”

  * * *

  I entered my apartment building, my head filled with all things Reyes and my heart filled with hope. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe just knowing he was still alive was enough to raise my spirits. I’d never realized I could hear his heartbeat, but thinking back, I’d always heard it, mostly in the twilight between awake and asleep, when semi-lucid dreams skated across the surface of my consciousness. The heartbeats would lull me deeper into oblivion.

  As I slid my key into the lock, I h
eard Mrs. Allen down the hall.

  “Charley?” she said, her voice weak.

  Lord of the Rings, what now? The only time Mrs. Allen spoke to me was when her poodle PP ran off and she needed a licensed PI to find him. Prince Phillip was a menace, if you asked me. I highly suspected that whoever came up with the concept of poodles in general had sold his soul to the devil. Because, really? Poodles?

  I turned toward her. If nothing else, I should get a plate of homemade cookies out of the deal, as Mrs. Allen considered homemade cookies payment enough for spending hours hunting down America’s Most Menacing. Which actually worked for me.

  “Hey, Mrs. Allen,” I said, starting toward her. In the very next moment, I heard an odd thump. Then a flash of pain exploded inside my head as the floor came rushing toward my face, and all I could think before darkness swallowed me whole was, No freaking way.

  Chapter Fifteen

  WHERE AM I GOING AND WHAT AM I DOING IN THIS HANDBASKET?

  —BUMPER STICKER

  A jolt knocked my head—the same head that had just been traumatized by a blunt object—against the side panel of the interior of a trunk. It startled me awake. But I quickly started losing ground, slipping back into oblivion with each beat of my heart. A rich, warm darkness threatened to overcome me, forcing me to push, to bite and claw back to awareness.

  I focused on the sharp pain throbbing in my head, the fact that my hands and feet were bound, the hum of an engine, and the whir of tires on pavement beneath me. If this was Cookie’s way of finally getting me into the trunk of a car, she was getting a year’s supply of bikini wax treatments for Christmas.

  “So, like, what are you doing?”

  I forced my eyes open to the grinning face of a thirteen-year-old gangbanger named Angel. Thank goodness. Surely, he could get me out of this. He was leaning in through the backseat. At that moment, I would have killed a woolly mammoth to be incorporeal as well.

  “I’m dying,” I croaked, my parched throat making me hoarse. “Go get help.”

  “You’re not dying. Besides, do I look like Lassie?” His smart-ass smirk faltered for a split second, just long enough for me to see the concern on his face. That was bad.

  “Who is it?” I asked, closing my eyes against the layers of pain throbbing in harmony against my skull.

  “It’s two white men,” he said. Worry strained his voice.

  “What do they look like?”

  “White men,” he said with a vocal shrug. “You guys all look alike.”

  I tried to release a loud sigh but couldn’t get enough air in my constricted lungs. “You’re about as helpful as a spoon in a knife fight.” I felt my shoulder holster for my gun, but it was gone. Naturally. And my shaky grip on consciousness was ebbing as well. “Go get Reyes,” I said, losing ground much faster than I could keep up.

  “I can’t find him.” His voice sounded like an echo in a cavern. “I don’t know how.”

  “Then let’s hope he knows how to find me.”

  What seemed like moments later, the trunk lid opened, waking me for the second time, and a rush of light filled the cramped space. I suddenly felt an odd kinship to vampires as I squinted against the harsh brightness.

  “She’s awake,” one of them said. He seemed surprised.

  “No shit, Sherlock,” I said, receiving a sharp stab of pain at the base of my skull for my effort.

  Of all the times for me to be scared, now would be a good one, but I was getting nothing. No rush of adrenaline. No fear coursing through my veins. No panic-induced sweats or stomach-turning anxiety attacks. Either they gave me something in the form of illegal drug use or I had turned into a zombie. Since I had no desire to eat their brains, I was leaning toward the narcotics rap.

  “You hit me,” I said as they dragged me out of the trunk and toward what looked like an abandoned motel. With infinite rudeness, neither of them answered, and I realized then that I wasn’t talking clearly. And walking with my feet bound was proving darned near impossible, too. Luckily, I had an armed escort. It made me feel oddly important. I totally needed bodyguards of my own. The implementation of a maximum-security program would not only deter future kidnappings, but it would also boost my self-esteem, and an esteemed self is a happy self.

  “What do I do?” Angel asked, bouncing around like a grasshopper in a skillet. He was hard enough to see as it was. I couldn’t seem to focus on anything beyond the thickness of my tongue.

  “Get Ubie,” I answered in a flurry of slurs.

  “Don’t you think I’ve thought of that? I tried to get him when you were channeling a coma patient, Rip Van. He’s freaking out, trying to call you right now. He thinks he’s being haunted by your great-aunt Lillian.”

  My escorts hefted me over the threshold of a crumbling single occupancy. A chair sat at the near end of the room along with a variety of blurry torture devices on the dresser next to it. Needles, knives, disturbing metal appliances designed with one thing in mind. At least my escorts had put some effort into this, had done their homework and prepped the area. I wasn’t just some random chick they were going to torture and bury in the desert. I was specially chosen to be tortured and buried in the desert. The self-esteem had already jumped a notch.

  “So, why does Ubie think he’s being haunted by Aunt Lil?” I asked as they plopped me into the chair before tying me to it.

  “Who is she talking to?” one of my escorts asked.

  The other one grumbled. It wasn’t hard to distinguish which was Riggs and which was Murtaugh, though they were clearly the evil versions. And I figured out why I couldn’t place their faces. They were wearing ski masks, which really didn’t coordinate well with their suits.

  I soon discovered that being bound to a chair was far less comfortable than one might think. The ropes cut into my wrists and upper arms and squished poor Danger and Will Robinson to no end. They would never be the same.

  “Well, I tried the sugar trick,” Angel said, still jumping about, trying to see exactly what they were doing. “You know, like you told me before, but his cat kept licking at it until it looked less like ‘Charley needs help’ and more like ‘Lil likes ass.’”

  “Ubie has a cat?”

  I saw a flash of movement, so fast, it hardly had time to register before I was looking toward the rusted sink at my right. Only then did a sharp pain shoot through my jaw, and I was beginning to realize how much this was going to suck. Grrrr, I hated torture.

  “You hit me again,” I said, growing oddly annoyed.

  “Ya think?” Evil Riggs said. Smart-ass.

  “Part of my brain hurts. I demand to know what that part of my brain is called and what its job is.”

  Evil Riggs paused. “Lady, I don’t know what that part of your brain is called. Do you know?” He turned toward his BFF.

  “Are you kidding me?” Evil Murtaugh asked, though I felt his inquiry insincere.

  I did my best to identify the men I highly suspected of kidnapping, but I just couldn’t focus. Whatever they gave me was great. I’d have to get the recipe.

  Their voices sounded like a recording played too slow, and I couldn’t quite zero in on their eyes to assess the color. I pretty much couldn’t zero in on anything that would have me tilt my head any direction but down. They had nice shoes.

  “We’re running out of patience and time, Ms. Davidson,” Evil Murtaugh said. His voice wasn’t particularly deep, and he had small hands. Definitely not my type. “You’re getting one chance and one chance only.”

  One chance was better than none. I’d have to give it my best shot. Go for the gold on the first try. Beginner’s luck, don’t fail me now.

  “Where is Mimi Jacobs?”

  Shit. Well, when all else fails, lie. “She’s in Florida.”

  “Where’s Floyd?” Evil Riggs asked his partner.

  “Florida,” I repeated. Geez. I tried again. “Flo-wi—”

  My head whipped to the right again, and pain shot all the way from my jaw down my spi
ne in white-hot waves. Still, I had a feeling Evil Murtaugh’s love taps would’ve hurt a lot worse had I not been drugged out the ass. Now I had to regain my bearings all over again. I sighed in annoyance.

  Evil Murtaugh kneeled before me and lifted my chin so I could look at him. It really helped. I could almost make out the color of his crystal blue eyes. And I would’ve bet my last nickel the other one might have had crystal blue eyes as well. I knew they’d creeped me out for a reason. Freaking fake FBI agents sucked.

  “This is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me,” said Evil Murtaugh, aka Special Agent Powers.

  I smiled. “Not if the guy standing outside that window has anything to say about it.”

  Both my kidnappers whirled around. Before they could do anything, Garrett Swopes put two into Evil Riggs, his draw so quick, it barely registered. Of course, nothing was registering clearly for me, but still. Evil Murtaugh drew his gun and shot back, forcing Swopes against the outside wall. It was all quite loud. I tried to give Swopes some help by head-butting Evil Murtaugh, but all I managed to do was to lop my head down for a good view of his shoes again.

  “Woohoo!” Angel said, whooping and hollering and jumping around. I couldn’t take him anywhere.

  There was some more gunfire, and someone kicked the door in. He had nice shoes, too. Shiny. Suddenly, Garrett was untying me. He was wearing dusty boots and jeans. And Evil Riggs might or might not have been dead at my feet. I mean, he looked dead with his eyes open and unseeing like that. But I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions.

  “He went out the back,” Garrett said to the guy with nice shoes. Who knew he kept such good company?

  I managed to raise my head long enough to identify Deadly Ninja Guy of the Three Stooges. He hadn’t changed much since he and his cohorts had broken into my apartment the other morning. “Mr. Chao,” I said, utterly surprised. “How did you guys find me?”

  “Mr. Chao and I traded numbers a while back when I busted him tailing you,” Garrett said, struggling with the ropes. He gave up and brought out a wicked-looking knife.