She gave herself a mental shove. There wasn’t time to worry about this now. Later, when she had some distance between her and this house, and a place to hide, she could obsess over why Guillermo’s normally tighter-than-tight security was barely making a D-minus grade.
Ducking into the closest room, she rifled through its contents and shoved whatever useful items she could find into a rattybackpack she spotted in the corner. She quickly changed into a clean shirt and a pair of pants, both too big for her, but she couldn’t afford to be picky right now. By the time she finished, fifteen minutes had passed.
Heading downstairs on bare feet, she prayed her luck would hold and that whoever was in the house stayed where they were. The living room, by the sounds of it. The sounds she’d heard earlier suggested a poker game was in progress while they waited for instructions.
When she reached the second-to-last step, she had to slink along the banister or risk being seen through the doorway to the living room. Down the hallway, a single dim light served as a beacon above the ancient stove in the kitchen. A quick search of the pantry gave her access to some beef jerky and packages of chips, as well as some bottled water, which went into her backpack. Then she headed toward the back door.
Outside, she saw an old, beat-up truck. Quickly, she considered the risk of hot-wiring it. The living room was on the far side of the large farmhouse, so hearing the vehicle start was a fifty-fifty chance. Deciding it wasn’t worth the risk, she put on the too-big shoes she’d stuffed with washcloths from the bathroom and jogged into the darkness, running parallel to the dirt road.
Fifteen minutes later, she came upon the edge of the town. Several vehicles lined the dusty street. After checking a few of them, she selected one, hopped inside the cab, found the keys in the visor above, and drove north out of town.
As San Martín de los Andes faded behind her and the sun rose, her eyes flicked between the side and rearview mirrors, watching for suspicious vehicles.
Out of a nervous habit from years long past, she worried the chain back and forth across her chin, tapping the ornament against her skin. Earlier, she’d ruminated on her necklace’ssignificance and used it to send up a prayer for an easy escape. What she hadn’t prayed for—or rather, who—was her brother.
Joey.
His death had changed so much, yet nothing had really changed at all.
Newspaper and television reporters had done all the hard work for her after her brother’s death. Front and center in their stories was the young man himself, Joseph Thompson, whose promising life was cut short when he became caught in the cross fire of rival gangs taking their war to the streets of San Diego.
Promising. Since when was being a drug dealer a step toward upward mobility? That reporting copy had her parents’ rhetoric all over it.
Still, she’d loved her brother, faults and all. She’d practically raised him herself because her parents basically demanded she be his surrogate parent. When she was young, she’d loved taking care of Joey. It was like having a live doll. He’d been such a good baby. So smiley and happy.
As she’d gotten older, though, she needed to be a kid herself. After all, she had her own friends, her own schoolwork, and her own goals. It was difficult not to be resentful when her needs, her plans, her dreams were pushed aside because Joey wanted or needed something. Who wouldn’t?
Now, almost a dozen years later, she still felt anger at them for their callous disregard of their firstborn child. Then guilt surged. It wasn’t his fault their parents had screwed up. They weren’t bad people at heart. They just… made mistakes.
She pushed back tears as the memories of Joey’s death slammed into her yet again. Most days, she could keep the pain at bay, but it was always there. Lurking. Just waiting for the opportunity to slither out, wrap around her heart, and strangle it.
It was moments like this, in the quiet, with no droning sycophants of Guillermo’s, no constant weapon reports, and no Guillermo himself, when her parents’ voices volleyed back and forth inside her head.
“If you hadn’t told us such vicious lies about your brother, he would have been here safe that night.”
“If you had gone after him when we asked you to, he would never have been in that neighborhood.”
“You were always jealous of him. You probably planted those drugs in his room, and now look what you caused.”
“His blood is on your hands!”
“I’ll never forgive you!”
“You’re no daughter of ours!”
A clanging church bell, like the ones at Joey’s funeral, echoed louder and louder beneath their rising accusations until it drowned out their words and left behind only the cuts against her heart, each one deeper than the last. Suddenly, it registered that those weren’t church bells but the clanging of a bell around the neck of a goat walking alongside the mountain road. A shattered gasp escaped Glennon’s throat as she slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting it.
She’d been lost in the memories, not paying any attention to her surroundings. That couldn’t happen. That was a sure way to end up dead.
The truck idled in the middle of the road. She tried to collect herself, and it was several minutes before she was able to ease down the panicked gasps. And all the while, her hands grasped the steering wheel with the death grip of someone hanging onto a ledge one hundred stories in the air. Someone who knew they could never possibly hold on long enough to be rescued, but were foolish enough, and desperate enough, to try anyway.
The goat continued on its merry way, completely unaware of the crisis it nearly became the center of.
Even once she’d overcome the memories assaulting her, her past circled around and attacked from the other side.
In the days after Joey’s death, days spent sleeping on the couch of a friend of a friend of someone she knew from class, she’d become obsessed with the news. She soaked up every word, and for a week, all it seemed anyone could talk about was that the police and the FBI were searching for members of the 619 Crew in the wake of the late-night shoot-out that left nine dead. A crew that worked under the protection of Hector Colonel’s cartel out of Argentina.
Hector Colonel was a dead man.
