PROLOGUE
The first thing the cop notices is the brisk chill in the air, the freezing bite of the Colorado air against the tiny portions of his bare neck. Even the fall jacket doesn’t detour the cold, and the cop shivers, flexing his fingers, so they don’t freeze together in the next few minutes. It’s been unnaturally cold the last couple of months, and he’s over it. He likes the warmth, the sun, the heat. Maybe someday he’ll get to move away, far away from this place, this life, these people.
But not now. Not yet. First, he has some unfinished business to attend to.
He waits under the abandoned freeway bridge for a few more minutes, cussing at the cold, watching his breath slip out in nothing but a fine vapor of steam.
Fuck, it’s cold. It’s frigid.
After what seems like ages, a gray Dodge Challenger pulls around the corner, headlights shining directly on the cop. He shields his eyes from the bright light and takes a step back as the car rolls beside him and stops. Rap music blasts from the speakers, shaking the car and vibrating the ground beneath the cop’s feet, but nothing else happens at all for a long moment.
The cop swallows the strange lump of fear in his throat and steps up to the window, grateful when it begins to roll down without him having to knock on the glass. A young Hispanic man in the driver’s seat turns his head to look at the cop, and something unsettling in his eyes forces the cop to take a step back without even realizing he’s done it.
“What happened?” the kid asks the cop, and that’s all he is really, just a kid, and yet he’s a kid far more dangerous than half the so-called criminals already on the streets of Denver.
“My partner,” the cop says, and he hates the apparent fear in his voice. He doesn’t want to be afraid, especially not of some teenage punk. He wants to beat the shit out of all of them. He wants none of this to be happening. “My partner got him, Cruz, and there’s nothing I could do to stop it.”
“You’re right,” the kid says, and the way he says it sends a shock of fear down the cop’s spine. “I guess it’s more difficult than you thought it would be playing both the devil and angel, huh, bro?”
The cop says nothing to this because there isn’t anything to say. The fucking kid is right, and the cop doesn’t know what to do now. What can he do now?
“I’ll do everything I can to make sure Eduardo Rey is pardoned as soon as humanly possible,” the cop says, leaning down to meet Cruz’s pinched face. “I swear, this wasn’t intentional.”
“I fuckin’ hope not,” the kid says. “Because this arrest just lost us over fifty grand in revenue.”
“Fuck.” The cop closes his eyes for a split second as horror grips him. It’s his fault. He fucked this up. And now he’ll pay the price. “What can I do to make it up to you?” he asks, watching as the kid lights a joint and takes a long, deep inhale.
“I could kill you,” the kid says, smoke escaping between his lips. “I could kill you and dump your body on the coast. That would end whatever disaster you’ve dragged my people into.”
The kid speaks so calmly, the cop notices, and that’s more chilling than anything else. He speaks as if killing a man and dropping his dead body in the water is just an average Saturday afternoon in his world, and it sounds to the cop like this crazy kid might actually … enjoy it.
“Please,” the cop says, but he cringes even as the pathetic word leaves his mouth. He’s never begged for anything in his life, but he’s going to beg now, and he’s going to beg hard because he isn’t about to die. He refuses to. “If you kill me, Eduardo Rey will rot in a prison cell forever, and you won’t make back the money you’ve lost with his arrest. Please … Let me live. I can help you.”
For a horrible moment that goes on for too long, the cop thinks the kid might just shoot him and leave him to bleed out where he stands, but he doesn’t. Instead, the kid laughs a little, amused by the weak cop’s words.
“How’s your family?” he asks the cop. “Hanging in there?”
The cop says nothing to this. He’s young but dangerous, and he’s killed twice as many people in his short life as the cop ever had. He doesn’t want to risk setting the kid off.
“And your partner,” the kid continues. When he smiles, he flashes gold-plated teeth. A grill, as the kids called them, and as stupid as it looks to the cop, it only makes this dumb kid that much more terrifying, and he doesn’t know why. “Does your partner have a family, too?”
Again, the cop says nothing. He knows where this is going, and he doesn’t like it. He might not have a choice in the matter, but he still doesn’t like it.
“Yeah,” he says finally, and it’s the moment in his life when every shred of humanity seems to leave his body, soul, and mind. “He has a family.”
“Good,” says the kid with a grin, and the cop is sure he’s going to vomit all over the hood of the fancy car. “Let us take care of that. An eye for an eye.” The kid begins to roll up the window again, cutting them off, and all the cop can do is stand there, feeling like Lucifer himself.
“What about me?” he asks weakly. “And my family. Will you let us live?”
The kid flashes one last smile, gold teeth glinting.
“Yeah,” he says. “For now, anyway.”
1
JAMI
It’s around three in the morning when my cell phone rings, jerking me out of restless sleep. I groan, hand groping for the small mobile phone charging on my nightstand. Eyes still closed, I swipe my finger over the screen and hold the phone to my ear, drooling tastefully into my pillow.
