A woman whose long black hair was in a loose braid down her back swiped away tears.
Selena leaned into the table. “But I want you to know that I made it. I’m okay now. There are people who are good, who want to help you. The man who drove you was a devil who should burn in hell. But the people here?” She gestured toward the door. “The nurses and doctors and the police? They aren’t bad. They want to help.”
The woman with the braid sniffed, blinked away her tears, and sat up straighter. Selena recognized her attempt to put on a strong front when everything around her was crumbling. She herself had been there too many times to count.
The woman said in Spanish, “The police told me they were there to help. They gave me a clean bed and room to stay in. And that monster came and took me. He took all of us. How do we know he won’t be back?”
Selena recognized the woman speaking must be Isabella.
“Because he’s in jail. When the police stopped the van, they took him and locked him away. It’s partly why I’m here.” She paused and looked directly at Isabella, who stared back, her eyes filled with worry.
“How do we know he’ll stay there?”
“If you can tell me what happened, we can make sure all of the people who hurt you go to jail and stay there. But we need your help.”
One of the women sitting at the end of the table hugged her arms around her chest and said, “What’s going to happen to us?”
Selena sighed. “I don’t know. I wish I could say, but I won’t lie to you. I do know that you need to tell someone what happened. Someone needs to stop the people who put you through this.” She paused. “And you need to put the people who shot Renata in jail.”
Selena watched Isabella turn her head away as if she’d been slapped. She closed her eyes and put a hand to her mouth.
“Will you tell me what happened?” Selena said, lowering her voice to barely above a whisper, wishing she didn’t have to drag the woman through the terrifying memory.
Isabella shook her head no.
“Do you know who killed her?”
She continued to shake her head no.
“Was it Josh?”
She began to cry, her body shaking. One of the other women wrapped her arm around Isabella’s back.
Selena stood and walked over to the sink and ran cold water. She found a plastic cup in a cabinet, filled it with water, and handed it to Isabella. She drank the water and eventually settled down again.
Selena sat down next to one of the women who’d remained quiet. Selena asked her name.
“Maria.” Her eyes were bright and clear.
Selena said, “I promise I’ll do whatever I can for all of you. But I want someone to pay for what happened.”
Maria shook her head, looking intently at Selena.
“People think there’s a woman who’s behind getting you here. Did you ever hear about a woman working with Josh and Ryan?”
Maria nodded, her eyes widening in recognition, as if someone had finally understood her.
“Did you ever hear her name?”
She finally began to open up. “No. They never called her anything but boss, or boss lady.”
*
Selena spent another half hour with the women, but they wouldn’t talk about the trip any longer. They were more interested in Selena and her life in Texas. She could see that her story at least provided some hope. But she knew there were most likely years of struggle ahead before any of them found a life anywhere near what they had imagined when they left Guatemala behind.
*
An overnight surveillance detail took Nick back to Mexico after dinner, and left Josie sitting on the back porch watching a lonely sundown, sipping a juice glass filled with bourbon, trying not to imagine the next day, trying not to wander around her house considering the odds she was going to get fired. She watched Chester nose around a mesquite bush, most likely on the scent of a jackrabbit. Her phone buzzed and she pulled it out of her back pocket and saw Otto’s name.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Are you sitting?”
“Yep. Good or bad?”
“I’m not sure. I took the gun, bullet, and casing up to Ernie at the state police lab and called in a favor. He agreed to run ballistics and get me something, hopefully by tomorrow. I also asked him to check for latent prints.”
“Yeah?”
“He just called. He’s not started on the ballistics, but he ran the fingerprints and got an exact match in AFIS.”
“Yeah?”
“Isabella Dagati.”
Josie drew in a sharp breath. The possibility of her being the killer was so remote it hadn’t even registered. She may have been technically a suspect due to her proximity to the body, but she’d never been seriously considered.
“What the hell?”
“That’s about what I said. I’d even forgotten Marta had printed her at the hospital. Ernie said there’s no doubt on the print. He hopes to run the bullet and gun tonight so we’ll have something more conclusive tomorrow.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Josie said. “Why would Isabella shoot her?”