Crash Into Me

problem. The sour smell hit him two steps before he entered.

Arlen’s sense of hygiene left a lot to be desired. There were scummy clothes and dirty dishes everywhere. Sticky-paged porn mags littered the stained carpet. The man behind the mess was facedown on the bed, snoring. A trickle of blood ran from his hairline into his ear.

Another complication. Wasn’t life full of them?

Killing a man wasn’t going to be any fun, especially a stinking drunk with a head injury. All right, so it wasn’t going to be a challenge, and it wasn’t going to be executed according to his plan, but it was going to be easy.

The boy’s disappearance, however, created a problem. James was a sneaky little bastard, always moving silently across the beach, drifting from one rock formation to another like a fucking sand ghost. Arlen used his son to procure women. And why not? The kid was beautiful. A sweet, sinewy bit of flesh.

He’d seen James from afar many times, and although he’d been careful, the boy may have seen him, too. After too many close encounters, he’d hunted elsewhere, preferring a more upscale neighborhood and a younger, classier target than what Arlen could afford. Since then their paths had rarely crossed.

Still, James Matthews was a loose end, one he couldn’t wait to tie into a neat bow.

Sighing, he turned his attention to the foul-smelling beast on the bed. He could put the gun in Arlen’s hand, raise it to his temple, and pull the trigger, but what if forensics proved he’d never regained consciousness before death?

Modern science could be such a nuisance.

With his signature attention to detail, he brought the slim bracelet out of his pocket and held it in his gloved hands, watching diamonds twinkle in the meager light. The piece was his favorite and he hated to part with it. It didn’t fit his wrist, but he liked to feel the cool metal against his skin and remember his first kill.

Tears sprang into his eyes, because he wanted to bring the shimmering band to his lips one last time and knew he couldn’t. Blinking them away, he laid the bracelet on top of an open magazine, finding it fitting that the spread- eagled sexpot on the page resembled Olivia.

She was a slut, but most women were. Only he saw their true natures. Only he had the power to free their flesh.

Men like Arlen Matthews gave him a bad name. By raping women indiscriminately and then allowing them to live, Matthews created a cycle of abuse. The whores Matthews brutalized sometimes became predators themselves. They became the kind of women who would tie up a young boy and toy with him. The same kind of women who had gravitated to the coked-out sex parties at his porn-queen mother’s house.

The abused became the abusers, having found a preteen plaything.

He shut the past out of his mind and focused on Matthews, hating him for his lack of foresight, his failure to plan, and his general disorganization. But most of all, he hated him for letting his victims live.

Feeling melancholy, he gathered up a dingy pillow and shoved it under Arlen Matthews’ face, gripping the back of his neck when his body began to convulse, holding him down and forever ending his miserable, misogynistic existence.

Anita Vasquez had been dreaming about Mexico. Though originally from Guatemala, her family had moved to Arizona when she was ten, and they often crossed the border to visit relatives in the Sonora Desert. Some of her most cherished memories were of that strange and barren land. Like Ocotillo Wells, the Sonora was endless and arid, isolated in its beauty, with dusty sand dunes the color of her daughter’s hair.

When she looked into her child’s eyes for the first time, she saw that lonely, desolate place, underneath a sky so immense she’d reached up to touch it, again and again, yearning toward something unattainable until her slender arms ached.

That was exactly how she felt about Sonny.

A thousand times, she’d reached out to her. And come up empty, every time. It was her own fault, she knew, drawing the blankets around her. She had never been good with women. Girls.

She’d had four older sisters growing up, all dark and heavy-featured, none pretty and delicate, like her. Their jealousy had made her turn away from other females, even her own mother, who was too worn and old from having seven children before the age of thirty to give her youngest daughter any attention.

Anita got all the attention she needed from men. A sway of her hips, and they were hers. Men were not always gentle, but they were easy. If they had quick fists, and so many of them did, they were also quick to apologize, to soothe, to kiss away the pain.

Men were easy. Daughters, complicated.

Giving up on sleep, Anita got out of bed and put on a pot of coffee. She stood in the kitchen, looking out the window, struck by the memory of her daughter at seven years old, pulling on her mother’s skirts. Sonny had been wearing a blue cotton dress, one of the few she owned, and it showed her scabby knees. A tortoiseshell clip was stuck in her light hair, hair so thick and unruly that Anita fought a battle with it on a daily basis, and lost.

“I don’t believe in God, Mama,” she said.

Anita whirled around, wiping her wet hands on her apron and stepping away from the sink. “Ave Maria Purisima,” she cried, making the sign of the cross and dragging her daughter to kneel before La Virgen. “Pray, mija. Pray for forgiveness, right now.”

Sonny crossed her arms over her chest defiantly. “No. Why should I pray to something I don’t believe in?”

Her jaw dropped. “You will go to hell if you don’t. You will be condemned to perdicion, para siempre.”

Sonny shrugged. “I don’t believe in hell. Can I go play instead?”

Perhaps she should have slapped her daughter’s impertinent face. More often than not, Anita had shaken her head, sighed, and let Sonny do as she wished. For all her strangeness, the girl was intelligent, and she never got into trouble at school like her brother.

For Rigo, Anita had made allowances. But fighting was one thing, sacrilege another. She made Sonny kneel in front of the statue for three hours.

When Anita was convinced she’d taught her daughter a lesson, she went to her and helped her up. Sonny could no longer move her legs, having been still for so long in that cramped position. Tears had poured from her strange, ice-colored eyes, but she hadn’t made a sound as Anita rubbed the feeling back into her knees.

“Why, mija? Why didn’t you tell me you were in pain?”

“I was waiting, Mama.”

“For what?”

“I was praying, like you said. For God to take the pain away.”

Anita hugged her close. “Oh, baby, I’m sorry. God does not always answer our prayers.”

“I know, Mama.”

Anita was surprised. “Do you believe in Him again?” Hope surged within her. She’d never felt this close to a common understanding between them.

“Can you hate something you don’t believe in?” her daughter asked, after a moment of intense contemplation.

“No,” she replied cautiously.

Sonny’s pale eyes met hers. “Then I believe.”

Sonny was surprised to find her mother already awake. Not only awake, but weeping into a cup of coffee, her heavy bathrobe belted neatly at her slim waist.

She steeled herself against the sight. Her mother liked to drink, and she liked to cry. Sometimes she did both at the same time, and wiped down the already clean kitchen countertops while she did it.

If only she could wipe her conscience clean, Sonny thought ungraciously.

“Do you mind?” she asked, helping herself to a cup of coffee. The cream was out, in a stainless steel carafe, and a bowl of raw sugar sat atop the counter. She sipped experimentally then sighed with reluctant admiration. Anita Vasquez made a damned fine cup of coffee.

“I met a man,” she said.

Her mother’s brows lifted with surprise. “Really?” She patted the couch beside her. “Tell me about him.”

Sonny sat in a chair opposite the couch, instead. It was pokey and uncomfortable, but she stayed. “He lives in Torrey Pines. La Jolla, actually.”

Anita smiled, knowing that meant he was rich. “Is he handsome?”