Blue Diablo (Corine Solomon #1)

Shows what I know.

As I came around the bed, he shivered visibly. Oh, I knew he was scent-sensitive. An aroma carries him back in time, makes him relive the associated memories, feel the emotion of that moment. The way it affects him, I’d call it a weakness, but how could I pass up the opportunity to torment him a little? How heady that I still have the power; I wouldn’t have guessed he was the steadfast sort.

I mean, just look at him. I noticed the glances we attracted when we were together. I’m well aware I’m not sleek and long-limbed like Chance. If I try to wear capri pants, I grow cankles, and there’s always a bit of kitsch about me, no matter how hard I try.

In the last year and a half, I gave up on elegance and worked on developing my own style. It generally involves gypsy skirts that show off my rather cute feet and peasant blouses. Luckily these things are readily available here.

He inhaled deeply as I got in bed, his eyes fixed on the décolletage of my undeniably demure gown. I swear I felt the heat of his look tracing the satin trim along my breasts. “You grew a mean streak, Corine.”

I recognized his tone. The perfume had been a bad idea, because we were both remembering the last time we’d been together. Christ, the sex was good that night. Looking at his mouth, I began to forget all the reasons why I shouldn’t get naked and roll around with him. Determined not to give in, I lay down and pulled the sheet up to my chin.

As if he knew, Chance touched my hair where it spread on the pillow beside him. “Red looks good on you.”

“Thanks.”

I’d never been a redhead while we were together, and for him, my changing hair acted as a quiet kink. He said it was like making love to a different woman every time. And why was I thinking about that now? Rolling onto my side, I killed the lamp and the room gained the soft luminance of distant streetlights. City noises came to us, cars and too-loud conversation.

“Giving me your back?”

“I’m not giving you anything,” I said, glancing over my shoulder.

Mistake. In the half-light, he looked as sad as I’ve ever seen him.

“Not anymore,” he agreed softly.

“Christ. What do you want from me?”

Propped up against the headboard, he smiled then and I saw the silver glimmer of his coin, rolling along his knuckles. “Only what I always wanted. Everything.”

Southern Comfort

The words sent a shudder through me. “You can’t have that, Chance. Not when you aren’t willing to give it back.”

For a moment, I heard nothing but silence from his side of the bed. He knew I spoke the truth because while he said the right things, showed affection where appropriate, he always maintained a certain amount of disengagement. Since I’m backward at relationships, I didn’t notice at first, but it came to me during sex one night. I looked up into his face and . . . the distance in his expression, combined with his pure technical proficiency, well, he might have been mentally running actuarial tables while making love to me.

I guess I have a certain amount of ego because I needed him to be lost in me; I wanted more than he could give. Somehow I doubt anyone will ever get past that little door in his head. He’s afraid of investing himself utterly, so he preserves the distance in case the relationship breaks down; it’s a sad, self-fulfilling prophecy because it inevitably does.

“I’d forgotten how you do that,” he said at last.

“Do what?”

“Eviscerate me with a few well chosen words.”

Irritated, I turned to face him. “Will you lie down and go to sleep already? We never talked about our relationship in bed, and now that we don’t have a relationship to discuss, it seems a poor time to break with tradition.”

His tone was mild as he slid down. “We do, actually. Or do you deny that we’re friends? Maybe you’d let just anyone sleep in your bed.”

Well, that hurt, and I couldn’t control my flinch. “Of course we’re friends,” I said tightly, ignoring his second remark. I didn’t doubt I was hurting him too, although it was beyond me to judge how much.

“That’s fucking great.” He stared up at my textured plaster ceiling.

I glimpsed then the way we would slice each other up with our broken edges over the next week or so. Christ. It couldn’t have been easy to ask me for help. I’d left him, and as a rule, he didn’t do recurring roles either. The heart of a Sicilian mafia don lurked inside him; he adopted a “you are dead to me” attitude toward those who walked away, and none of this mattered anyway. It was about Yi Min-chin, whom we both loved. I could put the past aside long enough to find her or learn her fate.

Inhaling, I braced myself and scooted close enough to put my hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. I thought this was some kind of trick at first, but . . . you must be so worried.” I felt like kicking myself for refusing to offer a little sympathy before now. “I’m sorry,” I said again, like that would fix it.

“I’m terrified out of my mind.” He sounded so bleak. “She makes healing salves and scented candles in Tampa now. What would anyone want with her?”

Why does it go down like this? Women who try to heal the world’s ills, women who practice patience and tolerance . . . well, the world doesn’t deal kindly with them, as if it’s possessed by sentient malevolence that doesn’t want such endeavors to succeed. But maybe, like everyone, Min had some secrets.

Nobody knew better than I that the past casts a long shadow, but this didn’t seem like the time to say so. Instead I shrugged, hoping I wasn’t about to make another mistake. But then my life is one long list of them, so what’s one more between friends?

“Put your coin on the night table,” I ordered.

To my surprise, he complied, but then he’d all but admitted to exhaustion. I wiggled sideways until my knees touched his. This close I could smell the faint citrus of his Burberry Touch cologne, and I felt the same pleasurable shock he must’ve experienced at discovering the frangipani on my skin. I’d bought it for him, that same trip to London. Touch wasn’t as expensive as some of his others; he liked Higher Dior and Dolce & Gabbana’s By, but he stopped wearing them. A year and a half later, he was still wearing Touch because I’d liked the way it warmed up on his skin.

Swallowing trepidation, I put an arm around him and he nestled into me as he always had. I was supposed to be comforting him but my face wound up in the curve of his neck. His arms came around me so hard it hurt, and with my hands on his back, I felt the tension coiling him like a spring. He probably hadn’t slept in days, not since his mom vanished. With all my heart, I wished he’d come because he needed me, not my gift.

But then, if that had ever been true, I might have stayed.

“This is what I was asking for.” My hair muffled his voice, along with the unprecedented admission. “This. Don’t let go tonight, Corine. Please.”

I didn’t.

My eyes burned with tears I refused to weep, and I swam through memories all night, long after I soothed him to sleep with finger-walking on his spine. In the morning, my right arm felt numb and my ribs were sore from lying in one position, but he looked a little better. I didn’t speak as I went to wash up.

Quickly I scrambled some eggs and we ate those with the last of my tortillas and salsa. I scraped the leftover rice and beans into the trash and then bundled it up in a tiny plastic shopping bag. Chance raised a brow at me but I didn’t explain. He caught on when I dropped it in a white decorative basket outside the shop, hung high to deter the dogs.

He grabbed his backpack and I shouldered my overnight bag, stuffed with five changes of clothing. If we stayed longer I’d need to find a Laundromat, but I no longer fretted about such things. Once I worried about wearing the same outfit twice in a week, but living here had persuaded me nobody gave a rat’s ass what covered mine.

“Where are you parked?”

“There.” Indicating a black Suburban maybe a block down, he set off.

I followed, fighting the odd sensation that someone was watching us. I paused, glancing down the street both ways, but I saw nothing out of place. Nothing to convince me it wasn’t paranoia. But if Chance had found me, so could someone else, and there were a number of people who would like to see me dead. Some were even crazy enough to do it themselves.

In morning light, Calle Jacarandas looked a little shabby. Doubtless it would look worse to someone accustomed to sanitized American cities. In addition to all the bars and grates, the adobe and stucco buildings held grime, though people fought it with flamboyant paint. On my street alone, you saw azure, mandarin, golden-rod, sienna, violet, and rose hued houses.

But there were more trees and flowers here too. Mexico City was one of the greenest urban sprawls I’d ever seen. My neighbor had a garden I envied: a huge noche buena tree with big glorious red flowers, native frangipani, rosebushes, hydrangea, and a wall full of bougainvillea. As we walked, I tried to see my life through Chance’s eyes and eventually gave up as I clambered into the SUV.

We were quiet as we drove. I guess he was thinking about what waited for us in Laredo, but to my surprise, he didn’t need directions to find the periférico or to get back on the federal highway that led north to Monterrey. I brought my map, just in case, because I hadn’t explored the city much beyond the barrio where I wound up.

He shrugged, correctly interpreting my astonishment. “I drove around here a bit, looking for you.”

I didn’t ask how he’d found me. Using his gift, he’d have stumbled on someone who knew about my shop. That was how it worked . . . and why he didn’t use it lightly. An unscrupulous person would turn such strange luck to any number of bad ends, but Chance had always used his power over coincidence with great care. I felt a flicker of remorse that I intended to warp it in pursuit of my mama’s killers, but not enough to change my course.

Chance bitched beneath his breath at the other drivers while we got out of the city. Maybe I should’ve warned him people here considered a red light a suggestion and that they thought nothing of turning left from the far right lane. Still, the Suburban meant he had a lot of weight to back up his vehicular threats and most folks gave way.

The demarcation from city to country came sharply, and the wide open spaces carried a remoteness you find nowhere in the U.S. Even the likes of Montana and Wyoming don’t compare to the vast empty stretches on the way to Monterrey, which sits on the southwestern Texas border. Laredo is about two more hours away from Monterrey, and I hoped he didn’t intend to try to do it all in one day. My ass protested the thought.

The mountains are starkly beautiful, but you can go a hundred miles between gas stations with a grazing goat as the only sign of life. Tequila farms lay here and there along the highway, and far off the road, I imagined I saw smoke rising from a distant chimney.

Driving from Mexico state to Nuevo León on the carretera nacional covered a lot of territory. Earlier this year, I read how a dispute between two Tzótzil Indian families over a pothole escalated into a full-blown shoot-out, resulting in four fatalities. It isn’t rare for guns to settle arguments, particularly in poorly policed indigenous areas; the modern world with a deputy parked behind every road sign to catch you speeding doesn’t exist out here.