The Devil's Elixir

  Michelle studied Alex for a second, then hugged him against her and nodded. “I know, but . . . I don’t know what’s got into him. He’s usually really friendly, and I thought that, at least, with you here . . .” She let the words drift off, clearly flustered and frustrated.

  “Given what you’ve both been through today . . . Maybe it’s not a bad thing for him to be wary of strangers.”

  “I guess,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s just that . . . He’s been having nightmares and, well, it’s . . . complicated.” She looked up at me with real hurt in her eyes, and I suspected that, despite everything she’d been through today, she probably felt awful about my first get-together with Alex turning out this way. “God, I’m really sorry. It’s nothing to do with you, you know that, right?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  I got down on one knee so my face was almost level with his, and extended a hand. “Hey, Alex. It’s really great to meet you.”

  After a long second, the kid peeked nervously at me, then shut his eyes tight and shrank back behind his mother.

  I glanced at Michelle. She was watching intently, and the heaviness in her heart was clear. She gave me a look of exasperation and apology. I gave her a soft nod. At least Alex and I had now met, even in these circumstances. It was only a minuscule step, but it was still a major one, for all three of us. There was still a long and, I’m sure, bumpy trail to travel, a lot of lost time to make up—and a lot of tough decisions to make.

  “You’d better come on in,” she told me.

  I stepped in and saw her glance warily down both ends of the hall before locking the door behind me.

  6

  We talked out on the balcony, with Alex inside, watching TV. He was big on Ben 10, which was—I’d just learned—a hugely popular TV show. He had all the gear: the small figurines of Ben and a whole bunch of weird-looking aliens, the sneakers, even a big, cool-looking gizmo around his wrist that—I also just learned—was called the Omnitrix and that any true Ben 10 fan just had to have. It was the device that gave Ben the ability to turn into any of ten alien characters, which he used to defeat his enemies. And right now, I was glad he had it. Given what he’d been through, Alex needed all the superpowers he could summon up.

  It had taken a little while for Michelle to calm him down, but somehow she’d managed it while I stayed out of sight and took in the view. The room was on the third floor of the low-rise hotel, facing the marina and the ocean beyond. Across the street, people strolled and jogged along the water’s edge, watching the sailboats slip in and out of the harbor’s mouth while, overhead, planes were gliding in, low and slow, on final approach. The whole world seemed to be out and about, enjoying the end of a glorious day by the ocean, talking and laughing and basking in the setting sun’s balmy embrace, oblivious to the horrorfest that had crashed into Michelle’s life that morning.

  The sliding door was half open, but there wasn’t much risk that Alex would overhear us, not with the TV on. Still, we kept our voices down. Four-year-olds, Michelle told me, had a way of surprising you with what they caught on the fly and brought up when you least expected it. Both guns—my Browning Hi-Power, and the silenced Glock 22 she’d grabbed off one of the guys who’d attacked them—were laid out on the flimsy white balcony table, along with a couple of Coke cans we’d liberated from the room’s minibar.

  I was having trouble making sense of what had happened, but at least, with Michelle there, I could start filling in the blanks. The ones in my mind as well as the ones plaguing her, starting with the one that, I knew, mattered the most.

  “He’s dead,” I informed her. “The first cops on the scene found him by your front door. I’m sorry.”

  Michelle just shut her eyes and nodded as her eyes welled up and a couple of tears glided down her cheeks. I pulled her in and held her for a moment, feeling her tremble against me.

  “You spoke to them?”

  “I called our local field office. I got them to look into it.”

  She nodded again, still tucked in against me, but didn’t say anything. She was still shaking.

  I gave her a moment, then said, again, “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah.” She edged back and wiped her eyes, looking all lost in a daze, a painful one—then her eyes sharpened slightly. “The guy I took out—was he still there?”

  “No. Just a lot of blood. They must have taken him away with them. How bad did you get him?”

  “Well, unless he’s some kind of circus freak who can swallow swords through the side of his neck, I’d say he was dead before they got him back to their van.” She blew out a frustrated sigh. “I’m telling you. These guys knew what they were doing.”

  “I know.” I watched her for a long second, then waded into the silence. “So . . . how close were you and Tom?” It felt a bit awkward to be asking her about him like that, and I felt bad about wondering how close he had been to Alex. But I needed to try to figure out what had happened, and why.

  Michelle shrugged. “We’ve only been dating a couple of months.” She shook her head with regret and looked out at the ocean. “He was a great guy.”

  “Was he living with you?”

  “No,” Michelle said. “He has a place over in Mission Hills. But he stayed over most weekends, when his kids weren’t staying with him. He was divorced. Fuck,” she blew out a hard, ragged sigh. “The kids. Oh, God. Who’s gonna tell them?” She looked up at me. “I need to talk to them.”

  “Not now, Meesh. Let’s figure things out first.”

  “They’re gonna be crushed,” she said, her eyes misting up again. “Crushed.”

  I gave her a moment, then asked, “What line of work was he in?”

  “He’s an architect. Was an architect. He had a nice practice going. Loved his work, you know?”

  I could see that talking about him, especially in the past tense like that, was tough on her, but I needed to be thorough. Michelle, though, was no stranger to the process, and she shook her head angrily, visibly trying to focus her thoughts. “Look, I know where you’re going with this, but this isn’t about him, Sean.” The frustration rose in her voice before she visibly caught herself. “They shot him the second he opened the door. They came for me. And if it wasn’t for me, if he hadn’t slept over last night, he’d still be—”

  “Come on, Meesh,” I interjected. “You can’t beat yourself up about that. It’s just bad luck, that’s all. Just horribly bad luck. And not to sound callous or selfish or anything, but if they were after you and he hadn’t been there, they would have got you and we wouldn’t be standing here.” I paused, giving it a chance to sink in, then added, “What about peripheral stuff? Business partners, friends, family—how much did you know about the rest of his life?”

  “It’s not about him,” she insisted. “He was a sweet, straightforward guy. Trust me, there was nothing about his life that would’ve led to this. Nothing. He just happened to be there.”

  I studied her for a moment, then said, “Okay,” deciding to park it for the time being. I’d still get the local bureau to run a background check on him, although deep down, I trusted Michelle’s instincts. “So if this is about you . . . what is it? You said your life was smooth sailing.”

  “Totally.”

  “So what then? Some kind of blowback from your days on the job?”

  “Must be. I mean, I can’t see what else it could be about, but . . . why now? I walked away from that life four, five years ago.”

  Her objection was valid. It didn’t ring true that something from that long ago would resurface now.

  “And you’ve been coaching hoops ever since?”

  “Yeah. It’s not like I had unlimited options, given my skill set. Besides, I like it. It gives me a chance to work with the kids and keep them on the straight and narrow, you know? And I like making a difference in their lives. They open up to me about stuff.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Teen stuff.”

 
“Drugs?”

  She nodded. “Of course. It’s a big part of their lives, you know that. And I figure, maybe I can still make a difference, maybe I can help keep them healthy beyond making sure they get enough air in their lungs, and do it without having to wear a badge.”

  I wondered if there was anything there. “What are we talking about here? You been causing anyone some major grief? Enough to have some pissed-off dealer come after you?”

  “No way,” she replied. “It’s all just small stuff. Local. Talking to the kids, sharing what I’ve seen with them. I’m not playing local sheriff or anything.”

  I reflected on that for a brief moment. Again, it was something to explore, although given the way she’d described the hit team, it didn’t seem like the right fit.

  “All right. What about your life pre-Tom. Who else were you seeing? Any ex-boyfriends this could be connected to?”

  Her face crinkled as she thought about it for a moment, then she said, “Well, there was this one guy, this dickhead FBI agent who knocked me up and split.” She looked at me, flatly, then gave me a half-smile of contrition. “Sorry. Totally uncalled for, I know. The thing is, after you . . . I had a newborn baby to look after. You think I was out hitting the clubs and living la vida loca?”

  “No, but . . . it’s been a few years. You must have seen some other guys before Tom?”

  She waved it off. “Yeah, sure, there were a couple of guys. But nothing serious. And nothing even remotely shady about either of them. I didn’t want to have anything to do with that life after I left the job. I had a baby to think of. I didn’t want to deal with that kind of bullshit.”

  A slight grin creased my cheek. She caught it.

  “What?”

  “It’s just hard to think of you in those terms,” I told her. “Leading a quiet life.”

  She let out a small, nervous laugh. “It took some adjusting, believe me. But Alex was all the motivation I needed.”

  “And that’s why you left the DEA.”

  “Pretty much. I didn’t want to stay on the job and risk leaving an orphan behind. And I didn’t want to stay in Mexico either. There was too much blood in the streets after Calderón decided to take on the cartels,” she said, referring to the then newly elected president’s decision to send out his army to try to wipe them out from his very first day in office, back in 2006—a war that, at last count, had claimed more than thirty thousand lives. The lucky ones had been gunned down, the rest either beheaded or burnt alive, their remains often buried in anonymous mass graves or dissolved in caustic soda.

  An uncomfortable question clawed its way out of the tangle of questions clogging up my mind. I frowned and went silent, unsure about bringing it up now. But I couldn’t resist. I needed to know.

  “Tell me something,” I asked. “When did you find out?”

  “That I was pregnant?”

  “Yes,” I pressed, half-reluctantly. “Was it before or after I left?”

  She looked at me for a moment, then said, “Before.”

  I felt a boil of anger bubble up inside my temples. It wasn’t the answer I’d hoped for. I just shook my head and looked away.

  “Hey, you were the one who took off, remember?”

  I turned to face her. “That doesn’t mean anything. I didn’t know. You had my number. Why didn’t you call and tell me? Did you think I wouldn’t want to be part of it?”

  “No. I just didn’t want you to be part of it,” she replied, holding my gaze, her tone firm and unrepentant. She paused, watching me, then added, “I didn’t want you in our lives, Sean. Not the way you were back then. Come on, don’t you remember? You were in a hell of a bad place. One big barrel of rage, all angry and bitter and consumed by guilt about what happened.”

  All, sadly, true.

  “It was a bad time,” I said, bitterly, as memories of that night, in that lab way out in the Mexican backcountry, came rushing back.

  Memories of things I hadn’t shared with her.

  Michelle wasn’t part of our task force—her deal was working the money trail undercover and taking away the drug barons’ easy cash—and she didn’t know the full story of why we went out there that night. I didn’t either. It had come out of the blue, an urgent, sudden rescue-and-retrieve op that I’d been drafted into. And when we got back, I was so torn up and felt so bad about what we’d done that I couldn’t face telling her about it. I couldn’t face telling anyone about it, least of all her. During those few turbulent days, all I’d been capable of sharing with her was that it all went wrong and that innocent civilians, including the guy we’d been sent there to bring back, had died.

  I didn’t tell her I was the one who had executed him.

  “I know it was,” she said. “But you didn’t have to bail like that. Maybe if you’d stuck around, I could have helped you work through it. And if you had, maybe we’d still be together now.” Her voice broke with a hint of some lingering regret.

  I was feeling it, too.

  She was right, of course. I should have told her. Maybe she would have been able to help me through it. Maybe I wouldn’t have had to carry it inside me all those years like I’d swallowed a nuclear detonator. But I could barely face myself back then, and I couldn’t bring myself to let anyone else know about it.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling lousy.

  She waved it away. “You know, the thing I never got was, yeah, he was an American civilian and he was forced to do what he did. But he still came up with some really nasty superdrug, right? I mean, that’s why you went out to spring him. And the fact that he died—sure, it was tragic. But maybe it was better this way. Who knows what kind of damage his drug would have done if it got out. No?”

  I shook my head and let out a weary breath. “We never did see eye to eye on that, did we?”

  “You know the damage he could have caused, the lives he would have wrecked, intentionally or not . . . maybe it was for the greater good.”

  I shrugged, not wanting to get into it anymore. “Maybe.” Moving away from it, I said, “So, who else knew? About Alex being mine. What did you say when you told them you were leaving?”

  “I didn’t tell anyone. I just said I needed a break and I just left. No one knew.” Then she remembered something and corrected herself. “Except Munro. The sleazoid saw me at the airport and just guessed. He even made a play for me. Knowing I was pregnant. At least I got to see the priceless look on that douche’s face when I shot him down. It was brutal.”

  I nodded and looked away, and stared at the horizon, feeling the sun’s reflection on the water burning my eyes, wishing it could burn away the cascade of images from that day that were tumbling through my mind’s eye.

  After a moment, I felt Michelle’s hand settle on mine.

  “You know what? I’m sorry, too,” she offered. “Maybe it was a shitty thing to do.”

  I turned to face her and shrugged. It was unfair of me to blame her. “No. I was in a really bad place.” I felt a need to move on, to get away from those memories. “Anyway, there’s no point stewing over it. Not now.”

  Michelle just said, “Okay.”

  I pulled out my phone. “I told my guys to sort out a safe house for you. It should be ready by now. I’ll give them a call to get the address and take you over there.”

  “What about homicide? They need to know the details about what happened.”

  “First things first,” I said. “Let me get you and Alex tucked away somewhere safe. Then I’ll go see them.”

  “I don’t want Alex taken away from me, Sean. Not for a minute. Promise me you won’t let that happen.”

  I looked at her and nodded. “It won’t.”

  It wasn’t something I could definitely guarantee, not without having cleared it higher up first. Had we been in New York, I would have felt more comfortable making that promise. But out here, I was at the mercy of the local field office’s Special Agent in Charge, David Villaverde. I’d never met him, but he seemed to be a stand-u
p guy. So far, he’d been accommodating, but he hadn’t yet heard the full story. Whether or not he’d still be as accommodating once he had remained to be seen.

  I made the call and got the safe house’s address. It was in a place called Mira Mesa, close to the Marine Corps’ Miramar airbase, about ten miles north of where we were. The plan was for us to take a taxi to the airbase’s entrance, where two agents would be waiting to escort us to the house.

  When I hung up, she was looking at me like something was churning away inside her.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Are you with someone?”

  “Yes.”

  She winced, then said, “I’m sorry. To have dragged you out here.”

  I gave her a little bob of my head to acknowledge her concern. “Don’t worry about it.”

  We gathered by the door of the room, with Michelle holding onto Alex’s hand. He was still keeping well away from me and eyeing me nervously.

  “All set?” I asked, reaching under my jacket and clicking the safety off my handgun.

  Michelle nodded. “We’re good.”

  I dropped my gaze to Alex. The four-year-old edged farther back behind his mother, and my heart cracked a bit. I looked at Michelle. She gave me an It’ll be fine nod. I acknowledged her with a slight nod back and opened the door.

  I glanced up and down the hall. There was nothing to cause me alarm. The corridor was empty.

  I led them to the elevators and hit the Down button. Moments later, a telltale whir and a high-pitched ping announced the car’s arrival. I glanced at Michelle and turned to face the doors as they slid open.

  There were people in there.

  Men, specifically—three of them, three tough guys in Windbreakers and dark caps who were pulling up their face masks just as the doors opened, three pairs of bad-ass, cold stares that suddenly flared with surprise.

  I understood instantly—I didn’t need to see Michelle’s jaw drop or hear her blurt out “It’s them.” I was already moving, lunging left to push her and Alex out of harm’s way, my right hand diving for my gun, my eyes locked on the three thugs as they reached under their jackets, their handguns’ grips coming into view—