“He did?” The surprised tone in her voice was unmistakable.
“Do you know anything about what happened, why exactly he left Denver? He said he’d never shared it with anyone—just with Dig, of course—but I was wondering if you had any insight because…” I took in a breath to squash the wave of emotion that threatened to crash over me.
“Jill, what is it?”
“I think he went back to Denver today, and it may not be a good thing,” I whispered.
“Oh, shit.”
My stomach hardened. “What is it? What do you know?”
She let out a heavy exhale. “The only thing Dig ever told me was that, back in Denver, right before they’d left, he had helped Boner kill someone.”
“Who? Who was it?”
“Some local drug dealer, a gang-leader type who was Boner’s boss.”
“Boner killed him?”
“Yes. Because of a girl.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Inès.
“Dig only told me because it was the first time he’d ever witnessed a kill like that. They were teenagers back then. It had blown him away. It was that awful.”
“What do you mean?”
“Boner used an iron crowbar.”
“Smashing bones turned into a high-paying job though. It became my trademark. I was real popular in certain circles.”
“They ran, they left Denver that night. Boner’s never been back since, he always said he couldn’t go back.”
My stomach clenched, my head swirled, a sour brew boiled in the back of my throat.
“Jill, Boner doesn’t know that I know that. I’ve never brought it up, and he’s never shared. Jill? Jill? Are you there?”
AFTER ALMOST SIX HOURS ON THE ROAD, I entered the Denver city limits on I-25. I flexed my gloved fingers on my handlebars and stretched my back as I lowered my speed in traffic.
I had returned to do what I had to do.
Here I was, running toward the very thing that had threatened me for so long, toward what had kept me running all these years.
And even though it filled me with dread, a lightness seeped through my chest, and a slight grin stole over my lips. I hadn't realized it earlier, but I now knew with conviction that the running in my heart and soul had finally ended.
The cops were the ones who picked me up off the pavement after the Calderones had taken off with Inès. Following a trip to the ER to sew me up, I got hauled off to jail on assault and attempted robbery charges. Some guy had been paid to play the victim, saying he’d slashed me in self-defense. It wasn’t difficult to find witnesses on the street who were more than willing to tell the Calderones’ well-paid version of the God’s honest truth.
I knew it was only a matter of time until I got implicated in my uncle’s death, if not any of the many, many other deaths and assaults for which I was responsible. I’d be in prison all my life or on death row in no time.
Fuck no.
Not for them.
Not for her.
I ended up in a juvie detention center. I got into plenty of fights, starting most of them myself, but one guy didn’t take the bait. Only one—Jake Pence, who would later become the One-Eyed Jacks’ Dig Quillen.
“Relax your ass already,” he said to me after dragging me out of yet another confrontation. “Lay low for fuck’s sake. Use it when it counts.”
He had a mop of dirty-blond hair and a get-the-fuck-out-of-my-face glower permanently engraved on his pretty-boy anglo features.
Jake sure as hell didn’t look like he belonged in juvie with the rest of us. Juvie wasn’t about making friends, but we’d gravitated toward each other. He was like me—couldn’t sit still, burning to get out, burning to be free of other people’s power over him. I saw it in his cold sand-colored eyes, in the set of his jaw, in the way he didn’t talk to anyone.
Anyone but me.
We hung out, made a plan, bided our time. One night, it all clicked into place, and we ran. We made it onto the roof and jumped over and down into a dumpster where we waited in the muck until the truck came to haul it away hours later.
We were free.
“You still want to find her?” Jake asked as we sat on a curb, devouring half-eaten burritos we’d found in a garbage can.
“I have to.”
“True love sure is one fucked up proposition,” he muttered wiping his fingers on his dirty jeans.
“I gotta talk sense into her.”
“If that’s what you want, but we need to get the hell out of here.”
A group of young boys kicked around a soccer ball in the street in front of us. They looked about the same age I’d been when my mother died.
“I can’t imagine my life without her, man. She’s always been there for me, and I can’t just leave her behind. Bottom line, before we go, I need to make sure she’s okay.”
Jake shrugged. “Let’s get this over with.”
Two days later we found her. She was shopping at this small pricey boutique.
“Inès.”
Her tense eyes met mine. They swam in something I had no part of, like a strange liquor or a strong expensive perfume.