Turning on her heel, she moved quickly, yet meticulously. She made an entire sweep of the house, double-checking that all the doors were bolted and the windows were closed and locked, with the curtains pulled. She headed upstairs and entered her room.
Without hesitation, she dove into her closet, grabbed a backpack, and began to stuff it with necessities—a couple of shirts, a hoodie, some extra underwear and socks. She traded her sandals for sneakers and her sweater for a quarter-zip jacket. A trip into the bathroom had her securing a toothbrush, toothpaste, a brush, and deodorant. Two extra hair ties went around her wrist.
Satisfied that she hadn’t forgotten anything, she went to her room and checked the bedside table. Lifting the false bottom, she keyed inthe code to get into the safe she’d installed there. Once the door opened, she extracted her pistol, ammunition, her passport, and a bank bag filled with cash, which she shoved into the backpack.
Once she returned downstairs, she threw the bag on the dining room table, then entered the kitchen to fill her insulated water bottle and grab the remaining granola bars and cracker packages left over from the day-care snacks. She shoved them into her backpack and cinched it tight.
As she went to the coat closet to grab her denim jacket, a knock sounded at the front door.
She froze.
No one could see inside, so she stood still, afraid to breathe, hoping against hope whoever it was would go away.
After a minute, she let out her breath and took another step toward the back closet.
The knock came again, heavier this time.
Mierda!Now it wouldn’t be safe to leave for hours, perhaps even until tomorrow. She needed to see who it was so she knew how to handle her escape.
On silent feet, Daleyza went to the dining room, grabbed her bag, shoved it into the closet, then made her way to the door. She peeked through the peephole and saw a man standing on her porch, a ballcap pulled down over his face and aviator sunglasses shielding his eyes. He was dressed in the uniform of a local shipping company, and he had a package in his hand.
“Madre de Dios,” she murmured. It was Livia’s medication. Today was delivery day. She’d forgotten to cancel it.
Opening the door, she put on her best fake smile. “Good morning, Muhammed. Thank you for?—”
She stared. Her eyes had to be playing tricks on her. The height. The jawline.
Lord, she was a mess. It wasn’t Muhammed, the regular driver, so he had a substitute today. “Sorry,” she apologized. “For a moment, I thought you were someone else.”
He stood there and stared at her from behind his sunglasses and ball cap. “Hola, Daleyza.”
The voice! Now she knew there was something wrong with her. She hadn’t heard that voice in what felt like centuries. Was her current danger pulling up memories better left buried?
“I’m sorry, I…”
“Let me in,belleza. We have very little time.”
Her feet were rooted to the spot, and she was fairly certain her mouth was hanging open in shock. “Ildefanso?” she whispered. “You’re dead.”
“For once in your life, please just do what I’m asking of you. There will be time for explanations later. We have about twenty minutes before your delivery driver wakes up, as well as thatpendejodown the street who was watching you. While I have help covering me, it won’t prevent a shoot-out on this quiet street. In fact, it will make it more likely.”
Her body moved out of the doorway even though her brain screamed to slam the door and purge this hallucination from her porch. He quickly slid past her, then closed and locked the door behind him. He pulled his sunglasses away from his face, staring at her with his snakelike silver eyes, his gaze giving her a once-over. “You look tired,belleza.”
Still stunned, she said, “And you look very alive for a dead man.” Rage bubbled up from the soles of her feet. “Seriously? All these years, and you decide to show up now?”
Going from believing him dead to processing he was alive took next to no time at all, which shouldn’t have been the case. But she’d never been one to think hard about something. It was either true or not true, and clearly, he was here now, so she accepted it without incredulity.
She launched into a hundred-mile-an-hour stream of Spanish, using every curse word she could come up with. And when she couldn’t come up with a translation, random English came out. Always her default setting whenever he pissed her off while theywere together. It was like no time had passed.
Surprisingly, he let her run. Maybe thirty seconds of verbal vomit as she stormed around the living room, returning to him twice to poke him in the chest.
Apparently, that was all he was willing to allow her. With a quickness she’d forgotten he possessed, a hand went over her mouth, and she found herself backed up against the foyer wall. “You can yell and scream at me all you want once you’re safe. Right now, I need you to do as I say, when I say, or we’re all going to be very dead, this time for real. You’re being watched, and my family don’t play, Daleyza. You know this.” He let go of her mouth. “Go pack a bag.”
Huffing, she barely refrained from stomping her foot. Obviously, he thought her stupid, as well as unobservant, to not have noticed that people were watching her. “It’s already packed. I saw the car down the street, so I knew I was in trouble.” She glanced at the door. “What did you do to Muhammed?” she asked suspiciously.
“He’s fine. A little injection, but he’s going to wake up in about fifteen minutes, and we need to be gone.”
The muttering in Spanish began again as she went to the closet to grab the bag she’d packed. “Where are we going?”
