“Takes about twelve hours to get there. Bands, twats and pot!” yelled Gollywow.
A motorcycle rally? It had never really occurred to me. “Yeah, I’ll think about it.” But instead of going in the club to get Wolf, I started back up the clanging metal stairs to the second story of the Victorian building.
Safely inside the hallway, I texted Santiago Slayer a photo I’d taken of that enormously bulky operative, his mouth corroded from doing Krokodil. He had stuck out like a rusty nail in a kid’s playground, not even bothering to hide the fact he was eyeballing either me or Pippa.
Do you recognize this guy? Because he seems to be following me.
Slayer didn’t immediately answer, although I knew from Facebook he’d been at a party in Flagstaff the night before doing jello shots topped with Froot Loops.
Pippa looked supremely surprised to see me. “Oh,” she just said, blankly. Like I was the last person she expected to see darkening her door. She wore a light summer dress, like the one she’d worn when she’d humped my thigh behind the ordnance shed. She was one steamy firecracker. Could we have something strictly physical? She might be mad when I inevitably left, but at least she’d be happy I didn’t bury her.
I had to ask, “May I come in?”
“Sure! Sure, sure.”
The inside of her apartment was about what you’d expect from the WITSEC program. A few items from Ikea decorated the space with such sparsity it just screamed “federally protected witness.” At her flimsy desk of particle board sat a closed laptop, a skein of knitting yarn and needles, and a book about the Dust Bowl.
“What wound up happening with that red-tailed hawk?” she asked.
“Oh!” That had completely slipped my mind. “Right. I took it to the raptor rescue just north of town. They said it’ll take about a week for it to improve, but the poison isn’t strong enough to kill him.”
“You seem to know a lot about birds.”
“Do I? Well, actually, an associate of mine taught me the art of falconry.” I was peering through her Ikea curtains onto Bargain Boulevard to make sure that bruiser with the decomposing jaw wasn’t following us again. “It was something we did in our spare time.”
“Oh, so that’s not something from your…your old persona.”
“My existence in New Mexico? No, that’s new. Like I take it, knitting isn’t from your old persona.” I almost said “Flavia Brooks” until I remembered I wasn’t supposed to know about that name.
“Hardly. I was into snowboarding and Krav Maga like I am now. They said those are generic enough things for the new me to do. But of course they wouldn’t let me take one rock from my three mineral cabinets. I loved collecting rocks. Apparently that would be an enormous dead giveaway.”
It was actually nice to talk freely with someone in the same, totally bizarre predicament as me. “Sax, the guy shooting archery with us, he runs a rock shop here in town.”
“Right. I heard that, but I don’t dare go by it, you know?”
I knew. “I used to love to draw. I drew all these designs. See?”
How could she not see? I had two whole inked sleeves, all of which had been done in Nogales since running from New Mexico. Just another feeble attempt at disguising myself.
“Those are beautiful. This one says—”
I drew the loose armhole of my muscle tank aside to display my pec. My nipple puckered when she leaned in close to read.
“Mea culpa.”
“Right. This acknowledges that what I did in New Mexico was my fault.”
“Oh, I’m sure it wasn’t anything totally heinous. I don’t know. I just have a feeling about you. I know you’re a sicario and all, but I don’t think you mean anyone harm. I know that sounds stupid. I’m not explaining myself very well.”
She looked adorable, as though toeing an invisible line on the floor. I said, “I think I know what you mean. Like, I’m convinced you didn’t do anything completely heinous in Corpus Christi.”
“Not at all!” she cried, stepping close to me. She raised her little fists to my chest, and I thought she was going to grip my tank top, to breathe her hot breath on my pecs again. My cock lengthened at this thought, and I took hold of her shoulders to steady her. But she was just giving emphasis to her words. Her eyes were frantic. “I did nothing but fall in love with the wrong person, this despicable Coast Guard officer who used me, then turned me over as a prisoner to a drug cartel to pay off a debt.”
I didn’t let go of her shoulders. “So you were…” I had to play dumb, as though I hadn’t seen the newspaper article. “You were arrested along with some cartel people, and turned yourself in in exchange for your testimony.”