They were close, so close to dismantling the network. For six months, he’d been playing the part of a midlevel distributor. He had seen horrible things. Done horrible things. A few more weeks and the interagency task force would be ready to move in—if he could only keep his precarious position as confidant to Oscar Ayala. That position was in serious jeopardy because of one reason—Oscar’s chica, Gabriela, a hot little number from Venezuela who had set her slumberous eyes on Riley.
He’d been discouraging her furtive advances for weeks, but it was getting harder and harder to tactfully keep away from her. Her influence on Ayala was powerful and while Riley couldn’t let the man think he was screwing his girl, he also couldn’t afford to have a scorned Gabriela whispering trash about him to the dealer he was trying to bring down.
He was in the kitchen pouring drinks, the music pounding, when she cornered him and, apparently tired of playing coy, took the direct route with a determined hand to his crotch.
“Oscar passed out. Now’s our chance,” she murmured in the dream/memory and wrapped herself around him like a boa constrictor. She kissed him, her mouth hard and practiced.
Short of telling her he was gay—which she could probably tell was a lie by his stupid body’s natural response to suddenly finding a lithe, soft female body pressing against all his most sensitive parts after months when he’d been too busy playing a damn role for any kind of social life—he couldn’t come up with a single way to get out of the situation.
He was just about to try the gay card anyway when the worst happened. He heard a roar from the doorway and looked up to see Oscar, the prison tats on his face even more menacing than normal.
“He attacked me,” the bitch cried out in rapid-fire Spanish. “I just came in for another drink and the next thing I knew, he grabbed me. I was trying to get away, baby.”
Riley had stood there for just a moment too long, his brain stalled out, then Oscar lunged into the room, whipping out his Glock.
“Puta,” he snarled and before Riley could say anything, he fired into Gabriela’s head from six feet away, splattering blood and brain matter all over Riley.
In the dream, the moment moved frame by frame in slow motion, much as it had felt in real life.
“She’s a slut,” the dream Oscar said, with a hideous grin on his face. “I’m sick of her shit. One cock after another. I can’t take it no more. She’s gonna give me crabs or something.”
Riley stood there covered in another person’s bodily tissue. He didn’t know what to say, what to do. He was a cop and he’d just seen a woman murdered in front of him. Did he arrest the crazy bastard now or let things play out for another few weeks?
“You messin’ with me?” Oscar asked. “You didn’t nail her, right?”
He wiped a hand over his face. “No, man. I didn’t touch her.”
The words scraped his throat raw, but he forced them out anyway. “I didn’t touch her. I wanted to but I didn’t. She was yours. Far as I’m concerned, you got the right to deal with her how you see fit. Ain’t my business.”
Oscar smiled that hideous smile again. “That’s right. Knew I liked you, man.”
In the dream, Riley stepped over the body and grabbed another drink, the norte?o music throbbing through his chest, then watched while rats crawled out from the cupboards and started eating the half-gone face.
The slide of something wet against the back of his hand jerked him awake, heart racing. He yanked his hand out of reach of the rats, going instinctively for his weapon before he was even fully awake.
It took him about twenty seconds to realize there were no rats and he wasn’t in that miserable apartment in Oakland, pretending to be the kind of man who could watch a person’s violent death in front of him without any visible reaction.
A dog was licking his hand. Ugly, stout, sorrowful-looking. Claire’s dog, he realized. He was at Claire’s house, with its pretty watercolors on the wall and the comfortable furniture and quiet sense of home surrounding him. He was in her house, in a chair by a dying fire, covered by a nubby-soft blanket. He could just make out a Claire-size shape stretched on the nearby sofa and see the blur of her face in the darkness, her eyes closed as she slept.
He realized he was holding his weapon. Feeling foolish, he slid it back into the harness and drew in a shaky breath, disoriented by the jarring transition from hell to this warm, soft house that smelled of fresh-washed laundry and summer wildflowers and strawberry jam.
It was a smell that was quintessentially Claire. Fresh and sweet. Delicious. Was it some kind of soap she used? Shampoo? Or maybe just her. He had a fragment of memory when he was a kid of walking into his house one day after school and this bright happiness blooming inside him when he realized Claire was there because he caught her scent in the air.
He scrubbed at his face. He hadn’t thought about Oscar or Gabriela’s murder in months. Why now?