when his best friend decided to take out the
“You couldn’t exorcise a cat, much less a bad-to-the-bone Chicano with gunpowder in his blood. Besides, you hate exercise.”
Chuckling at his own joke, he took my outstretched hand and pulled me onto the balls of my feet. I needed to stay squatted behind the Dumpster, the prime tactical position for an ambush. “You don’t have any blood,” I pointed out helpfully.
“Sure I do,” he said, looking down at himself. He wore a dirty white T-shirt with jeans hanging low on his hips, worn-out sneakers, and a wide leather wristband. His inky black hair was cropped short over his ears, but he still had a baby face and a smile so genuine, it could melt my heart on contact. “It’s just kind of see-through now.”
I scraped my hands down the side of the Dumpster to no avail, wondering how many germs were hitching a ride in the process. “Do you have a reason for being here?” I asked, now swiping my hands at my pants. The oil was obviously going to remain stuck until I found some water and a professional-grade degreaser.
“I heard we got a case,” he said. While Angel had been a constant companion since my freshman days of high school, he agreed to become my lead investigator when I opened my PI business three years ago. Having an incorporeal being as an investigator was kind of like cheating on college entrance exams — nerve-racking yet oddly effective. And we’d solved many a case together.
Facing no such quandaries with the oil slick, he sat down in front of me, his back against the Dumpster, his eyes suddenly drawn to my hand as I knocked the rocks and soil off my left butt cheek. “Can I help?” he asked, indicating my ass with a nod. Thirteen-year-olds were so hormonal. Even dead ones.
“No, you can’t help, and we suddenly have not one, but two cases.” While Mimi was my professional priority, Reyes was my personal one. Neither was expendable, and I pondered which case I should put him on. I opted for Reyes because I simply didn’t have any other resources in that area. But Angel wasn’t going to like it.
“How much do you know about Reyes?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t disappear. Or pull a nine-millimeter and gank me.
He eyed me a moment, shifted uncomfortably, then rested his elbows on his knees and looked off into the distance. Or, well, into a warehouse. After a long while, he said, “Rey’aziel isn’t our case.”
I sucked in a soft breath with the mention of Reyes’s otherworldly name. How did he know it? Better yet, how long had he known it?
“Angel, do you know what Reyes is?”
He shrugged. “I know what he isn’t.” He leveled an intent gaze on me. “He isn’t our case.”
With a sigh, I sat on the pavement, slick or no slick, and leaned against the trash bin beside him. I needed Angel with me on this. I needed his help, his particular talents. After placing a dirty hand on his, I said, “If I don’t find him, he’s going to die.”
A dubious chuckle shook his chest, and in that instant, he seemed so much older than the thirteen years he’d accumulated before he passed. “If only it were that easy.”
“Angel,” I said, my tone admonishing. “You can’t mean that.”
The look he stabbed me with was one of such anger, such incredulity, I fought the urge to lean away from him. “You can’t be serious,” he said as if I’d suddenly lost my marbles. Little did he know, I’d lost my marbles eons ago.
I knew Angel didn’t like the guy, but I had no idea he felt such malevolence toward him.
“Is there a reason you’re sitting in a puddle of oil talking to yourself?”
I looked up to find Garrett Swopes standing over me, a dark-skinned, silvery-eyed skiptracer who knew just enough about me to be dangerous; then I glanced back at Angel. He was gone. Naturally. When the going gets tough, the tough refuse to talk about it and insist on running away to stew in their own crabby insecurities.
I struggled to my feet and realized my jeans would never be the same again. “What are you doing here, Swopes?” I asked, swiping at my ass for the second time that morning.
As skiptracers went, Garrett was one of the best. We’d been fairly decent friends for a while until Uncle Bob, in a moment of weakness brought on by one-too-many brewskis, told him what I did for a living. Not the PI part — Garrett already knew that — but the Charley-sees-dead-people part. After that, our slightly flirtatious relationship took a left turn into hostile territory, as though he were angry that I would try to pull off such a scheme. A month later, Garrett was slowly but surely — and quite reluctantly — beginning to believe in what I could do, having seen the evidence firsthand. Not that I gave a shit if he believed me or not, especially after his behavior over the last month, but Garrett was good at his job. He came in handy from time to time. As for the skeptic in him, he could bite my ass.
At the moment, he seemed to be contemplating that very thing. He’d tilted his head and was eyeing the general vicinity of my lower half as I knocked dirt and rock chips off it when he asked, “Can I help?”
“No, you can’t help.” Didn’t I just have this conversation? “Stop channeling Angel and answer my question. Wait.” Reality sank in slowly but surely. My jaw dropped for a moment before I caught it and turned on him. “Oh, my god, you’re the tail.”
“What?” He stepped back, his brows drawn sharply together in denial.
“Son of a bitch.” After staring aghast for a solid minute — thank goodness I’d recently practiced aghast in the mirror — I watched him try to disguise the guilt so plainly on his features. Then I threw a punch that landed on his shoulder with a solid thud.
“Ouch.” He covered his shoulder protectively. “What the hell was that for?”
“Like you don’t know,” I said, stalking away. I couldn’t believe it. I simply could
The injustice of it all. The indignation. The … wait. I stopped short and considered all the possibilities. All the wonderful, glorious possibilities.
Garrett had been trailing behind me when I stopped and, his reaction time being what it was, almost ran me down. “Did you go off your meds again, Charles?” he asked, sidestepping around me while trying to change the subject. He’d taken to calling me Charles recently. Probably to annoy me, so I didn’t let it. And my meds were none of his concern.
I turned, planted my best death stare on him, and said, “Oh, no, you don’t.”
“What?”
He stepped back. I stepped forward.
“You aren’t getting off that easy, buddy boy,” I said, stabbing him with an index finger.
The confused expression on his face would have been comical had I not felt so blindsided that my uncle put him, of all people, on my tail. And I was in dire need of an investigator who was on Albuquerque’s finest’s payroll. Free labor.
“Did you just call me buddy boy?”
“Damn straight I did, and if you know what’s good for you,” I said, taking another step toward him, “you won’t insult me for not coming up with anything better on such short notice.”
“Okay.” He held up his hands in surrender. “No insults, I swear.”
I trusted him about as far as I could throw him. He was totally going to insult me the first chance he got. Damn it. “How long have you been tailing me?”
“Charles,” he said, trying to come up with a good story.
“Don’t even.” I poked him again for good measure. “How long?”
“First…” He took hold of my shoulders and led me back toward the building as a car passed through the alley.
When we were out of harm’s way, I crossed my arms and waited.
With an acquiescent sigh, he admitted, “Since the day Farrow disappeared from the long-term-care unit.”
I sucked in a sharp breath of indignation. “That was a week ago. You’ve been following me for a week? I
