“Good, I don’t feel like chasing you.”
I stand up and follow her out. It’s blazing hot out, the sun baking down on the city streets, hitting the brick of the buildings and warming them up to oven hot. I start to sweat. She doesn’t.
“What happened between you and Santiago?” she says, glancing at me as I walk beside her.
“We had a falling out.”
“Over what?”
“He had two apprentices at the time. Only one of us was going to pass the test. It was never said but I knew it all the same.”
“You had to kill the other one?”
“No, he did, and I swore if I ever saw him alive again, I’d kill him. He just laughed at me. Santiago de la Rosa can never be killed, he’d say.”
“He says that a lot. Who was the guy?”
“Girl. Like you. You alone?”
“I’m the only one.”
“You’re not freelancing yet.”
She shakes her head.
“What’d he do after you returned from your failed mission? You tried to kill me and didn’t succeed.”
“Nothing. He said we’d correct the problem. He said you were his most dangerous pupil and it was a mistake to send me alone.”
“Oh,” I say cheerily. “I guess he didn’t tell you what that means.”
“No, what?” she says, a hint of curiosity in her voice.
“It means he’s going to kill you, too. He doesn’t tolerate failure, Lily. Is that your name, Lily?”
“I gave it to you true. I was there to kill you, after all, not much reason to hide my name. Professional courtesy, and Santiago is not going to kill me.”
I walk with her to a parking garage and my instincts make me scan all the exits and corners.
“Have you told Santiago we’re coming?”
“Yes, of course. I’m not an idiot. If I don’t make it back, your women are dead.”
“Right, right. How much time would you say we have?”
“It’s an hour drive.”
“Call him and tell him there’s traffic, it will take longer.”
“Why should I do that?”
“I have a story you need to hear.”
“I’m not interested.”
“I’m offering you this as a courtesy. I’m trying to save you.”
“Why?”
“You’re a woman.”
“So?”
“You want the answer to that question, tell Santiago we’re going to be late.”
She stops and fishes out the keys to the car.
“Get in, Mulqueen.”
I sit down in the front seat of the car, and wait. Outside Lily has a clipped conversation on the phone before she gets in with me. She starts the car and wheels around to the bottom of the garage.
“I’ve given you maybe an extra twenty minutes. Think that’ll work?”
“Yeah. I’ll make this quick. When Santiago first took me in I was twelve years old. He already had another apprentice. Her name was Samantha. She was a year older than I was, and I was just starting to notice girls, so it made things a little awkward even in Santiago’s place. He still at the villa?”
“No, we move around.”
“Yeah, figures.”
“So you got close,” she says as she eases the car to a stop at a red light. “So what?”
“We got close. It was an awkward teenage thing. We spent a lot of time together, shared training, did homework together. Lots of math.”
“Yeah, there’s a lot of trigonometry involved in sniping.”
“Chemistry for poisons and explosives, the works. You know the drill. We competed a lot. She was very tomboyish. It was a weird thing because we were basically in killer school.
“Still, it wasn’t real. It was like a game. None of it felt real, the target shooting, the sparring with rubber knives. Neither of us shared much about our pasts. All I knew about her was that her parents died. I didn’t tell her much more about me.”
“Then what?”
“Two horny teenagers in close proximity, mostly unsupervised. Do I need to spell it out?”
“No.”
“Santiago gave us condoms. He wanted it that way. I’m surprised there isn’t a boy that trained with you.”
“No, I’ve always been alone.”
“Anyway. He blooded us at sixteen. Not together, thank God. Even then some part of me didn’t want her to see me do it. I didn’t want to see her do it either.”
“You’re delusional,” Lily sighs. “This kind of poetic bullshit is what Santiago wants us to give up. Nobody is innocent, Mulqueen.”
“I was. You were. Santiago de la Rosa is twisted, Lily, and he wants to make us like that which twisted him. This needs to end. He needs to be stopped.”
“Shut up.”
I sigh and shift in the seat. “You know what the blooding was like. Mine went poorly but it went. I think he decided then I was the useless one, but I kept at it, kept up with the training. Started going with him on missions. He never took us together, only singly. You know why he did that?”