Mia kept moving along the alley. Behind her, the muffled noise from inside the venue had changed shape. It wasn’t crowd noise anymore. Men were shouting over one another. Then came a scream, followed by another, and voices carrying through the building as word spread.
She pushed on toward the street. Her foot caught the edge of a drainage channel and her knee buckled. She went down on one hand and stayed there for a second, breathing, then forced herself back up.
Renato was parked a few streets over, engine off, lights off, a shape hunched behind the wheel of a car with a cracked side mirror held on by tape. He had the door open before she reached it.
“You’re bleeding through your vest,” he said.
“I know.”
“Get in.”
She got in.
Renato handed her phone across first, then the wallet, the memory card, and Carla’s folding knife.
Mia set Valdés’s pistol on the console between them.
Renato looked at it, then at her.
“Don’t ask.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
He picked it up, checked the safety, and put it in the glove compartment with the rest of her things.
Mia powered her phone on, then took Rafa’s phone from her pocket.
The ledger photographs were still there.
She sent them to her own phone first. Every page. When the last one came through, she opened the photograph of Dario’s entry and forwarded it to Carla.
Then she went back to Rafa’s phone and opened the leadership channel.
Arriaga. Molina. Serrano.
The names meant nothing to her, but Valdés had kept them close enough to put them in the same place.
Mia attached the ledger photographs.
She hit send.
“Mia.” Renato’s eyes dropped to the blood soaking through the wrap at her side. “That wound’s opened again. We need to get back to the gym. Now. I need to clean it and redress it before it gets any worse.”
“I’m not finished.”
“You’re finished. Look at yourself.”
“Valdés is dead.”
That stopped him. He turned and looked at her properly for the first time. “Dead how?”
“Doesn’t matter how.” It did, but she didn’t have room to explain it now. “Cruz was stealing from Valdés. Fixing fights behind his back, moving his money. Valdés had proof in his ledger. I got photos and sent them to Valdés’s people.”
“Then you come back with me.”
“I want Cruz.”
Renato’s jaw worked. He knew that look. Mia had made up her mind.
“Cruz is a rat in a box right now. Let Valdés’s people deal with him.”
“The second he realizes they know what he’s done, he’ll disappear.”
“Then let him.”
“No.” Mia looked at him. “I want to see him face to face. I want to hear him tell me why he killed Luis.”
Renato exhaled through his nose. He knew he wasn’t going to change her mind.
“You’ve got until nine,” Renato said. “After that, I’m coming to look for you.”
“Nine,” she said.
She got out before he could argue.
She kept to the quieter streets, watching for anyone following her. When she turned the last corner, Cruz’s building came into view.
Something was wrong.
Too many lights were on for this hour. A car idled in the loading bay beyond the raised security gate, trunk open, nose pointed toward the street. The driver smoked beside it, checking his phone every few seconds. Through a side window, Mia saw a young woman carrying a box of files toward the rear of the building.
Rafa had been right. Cruz was getting out.
He just hadn’t made it yet.
The dumpster against the wall was full of shredded paper, more spilling over the top than the bin could hold, catching in the wind and drifting a few feet before settling like dirty snow.
The driver looked up as Mia approached, cigarette halfway to his mouth. His eyes went to the blood on her vest, then to the building behind him.
His phone buzzed.
He glanced at the screen, then looked again. The cigarette lowered slowly from his mouth.
Another message came through. Whatever Mia had started with those photographs was spreading.
“Fuck.”
He read it, looked toward the rear door, then back at Mia.
“What the fuck did he do?”
Mia kept walking. “You should probably leave.”
For a second, he seemed to consider going inside. Then his phone buzzed again.
That decided it.
He dropped the cigarette, left the keys in the ignition, and walked away.
She took the keys from the ignition, closed the trunk, and locked the car. Then she tossed the keys into the dumpster overflowing with shredded paper and hit the wall switch that dropped the rolling security gate across the rear exit. It rattled down slowly, then hit the ground with a clang.
Somewhere inside, a phone was ringing. Nobody picked it up.
Mia went around to the public entrance and tried the door. It opened. Cruz’s polished reception area, all pale stone and framed photographs, looked like it had been picked at by something with no patience. Half the frames were gone from the wall, leaving rectangles of unfaded paint where they’d hung. An open box sat on the reception desk with papers sticking out at angles. The screen that usually played highlight reels was dark.
She heard Cruz before she saw him, his voice coming from behind the partly open door to his office. The calm was gone. He was talking too fast, words clipped and impatient, barely giving whoever was on the other end time to answer.
“Listen to me. I need the airport contact. Not his secretary. Him. Put him on.” He paced somewhere beyond the door. “No, I don’t have time for that. Just put him on.” A pause. “Hello?” Another. “Hello?”
Silence.
“You son of a bitch.”
As Mia stood in the reception area, a toilet flushed and a moment later, a door opened and a big man in a dark jacket stepped out, still fastening his belt. He took two steps before he saw her and stopped.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Before Mia could answer, the man’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and read the screen. His eyebrows lifted, then drew together. He read the message a second time.
He looked toward Cruz’s office, then back at Mia. “You with them?”
“With who?”
“Valdés’s people.”
“No, but I think they’ll be here soon.”
His phone buzzed again.
Whatever it said this time ended the conversation.
“Fuck this.”
He pocketed the phone and headed for the exit.
Mia watched him go, then crossed to Cruz’s office and pushed the door open.
Cruz stood at the window with his back to her, looking down toward the loading bay.
“Get these files into the car,” he said without turning. “And tell the driver we’re leaving now.”
“Going somewhere?”
Cruz turned.
He studied her for a moment, then lowered himself into the chair behind the desk, reclaiming the position he knew best.
“You’ve caused me a lot of problems, Mia.”
He reached beneath his jacket and drew a pistol from the holster at his side. Mia’s body tightened, but Cruz didn’t point it at her. He placed it on the desk between them.
“You were supposed to do one simple thing.”
“You killed Luis.”
“Because you didn’t stay down.”
Mia stared at him.
“I met Valdés tonight.”
Cruz looked genuinely surprised.
“And?”
“He told me you’ve been stealing from him.”
Cruz glanced toward the phone on his desk, then back at her.
“Valdés told you that?”
“He showed me.”
“Bullshit. Why would he do that?”
Mia ignored his question.
“I took photographs of Valdés’s ledger and sent them out to a few of your friends. Arriaga and Molina. Oh, and Serrano.”
Cruz stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. “You’re lying. Valdés would never let you do that.”
“He didn’t.”
Cruz frowned.
“I killed him. After that, he wasn’t really in a position to stop me.”
Cruz went completely still.
“What?”
“Valdés is dead.”
He stared at her, searching for some sign she was bluffing.
“You killed Alejandro Valdés?”
Mia held his gaze. “I didn’t come here to talk about him.”
“Then what the fuck do you want?”
The answer came easily.
“Luis.”
Something shifted in Cruz’s face.
“Why him?”
Cruz said nothing.
“Did you give the order?”
Cruz’s mouth opened, but Mia didn’t give him time to answer.
“No. Of course you didn’t.” She watched him. “Something like that would have to come from Valdés. You weren’t important enough to make that decision yourself.”
Cruz’s expression hardened.
“I made the decision.”
Mia stared at him.
“Luis was already a problem,” Cruz said. “He’d been watching me. Recording things he had no business recording. But killing him solved more than one problem.”
“You knew I’d come looking.”
“I knew you’d do something.” Cruz leaned back. “I just didn’t know how far you’d take it.”
“And the coin?”
“Valdés was already starting to suspect me. Asking questions about money, watching who I was talking to.” Cruz gave a small shrug. “Luis gave me an opportunity to take some of that heat off. Leave Valdés’s coin with the body, give you somewhere else to look. Maybe you go after him. Maybe the police do. Either way, people stop looking at me.”
He studied her. “You did more damage than I expected.”
He meant it as a compliment.
“You gave me someone to hate.”
Cruz’s mouth twitched. “And look what you did with it.”
For a moment, the only sound was the faint hum of the building around them. Then, from somewhere out on the street, an engine rose sharply.
Cruz’s eyes shifted toward the window.
Tires squealed against the pavement as a car pulled up hard outside. A second followed seconds later. Doors slammed. One. Two. Then several more.
Voices carried from the street, too muffled to make out the words, but getting closer.
Cruz looked toward the plain, dark-wood door beside the shelving, then back at Mia.
“They’ll come for you too. You killed Valdés. That’s not something they forgive.”
Mia just looked at him.
“They know how to find you, Mia.”
From reception came the sound of the front door opening.
Cruz’s eyes snapped toward the office door.
For a moment, there was nothing. Then footsteps crossed the stone floor outside, slow and deliberate.
Cruz swallowed.
“You don’t know what they’ll do to me,” he said, and his voice cracked, twenty years of composure gone in a sentence.
Then he moved.
Cruz snatched the gun from the desk and came around it fast, heading for the unmarked door beside the bookshelves.
Mia moved with him.
She caught his leg before he reached it and drove her heel into the side of his knee with everything her weight could put behind it.
The joint gave.
Cruz went down screaming. The gun flew from his hand and skidded across the floor as he grabbed at the edge of the desk, trying to drag himself upright on one leg.
He couldn’t.
Mia moved around the desk and yanked open the top drawer.
The photograph was still there.
She took it out and held it up for Cruz to see. Luis outside their apartment, caught in the middle of an ordinary morning.
“Luis had nothing to do with any of this.”
Cruz stared at the photograph.
A murmur of voices came from reception.
Close now.
Someone spoke too quietly for Mia to make out the words. Another voice answered. Then came the soft scrape of a shoe against the stone floor just outside the office.
Cruz looked at the door.
“Mia.” His voice had gone thin. “Get me out of here. Please. Take me with you. I’ll tell you anything. I’ll give you anything. Just get me out.”
Mia looked at him.
“Please.”
His fate didn’t depend on her anymore.
Mia turned and went through the unmarked door beside the shelves and closed it behind her.
A short corridor led to the green glow of an EXIT sign above the service stairwell.
She headed for it without looking back. She’d gotten the answers she came for. They hadn’t helped.
From the stairwell, she heard boots moving into Cruz’s office, fast and heavy. Cruz’s voice pitched up into something pleading and frantic, words tumbling over one another. There was a sudden rush of movement, shouted voices, furniture scraping hard across the floor.
She reached the bottom of the stairs, shoved through the service door, and burst into the alley. It smelled like exhaust, and shredded paper from the dumpster was still drifting against the wall.
Mia headed for the street, moving as fast as her side would let her. She needed distance from Cruz’s building before anyone came looking through that service door.
She headed for Renato’s.