Ramon glanced back up at Carlos, who nodded to him that they were done for now. Without a word Ramon stood back up, and they drifted down the street toward the empty Civic. The two officers who had been parked two blocks down keeping an eye on the apartment building stood next to it.
One of the officers said, “You wanted to talk to us?”
Carlos said, “Where were you?”
Both officers played dumb. The other one shrugged, shaking his head.
“What are you talking about?”
Carlos said, “How much did those pimps pay you?”
One of the officers looked down at his feet, then looked back up.
“We were hungry, okay? That’s all. We left to get some food.”
Carlos glared hard at them, and then shook his head.
“Get the fuck out of here.”
The two officers scurried away.
Ramon watched them and said, “You really think Hector and Pedro paid them off?”
“Don’t you?”
Ramon shrugged.
Carlos said, “It seems Samantha Lu is more than what she appears.”
Ramon nodded.
“If that’s even her real name.”
“Good point. No college student can do what she did.”
“Assuming it’s really her.”
Carlos gestured at the blue Civic.
“That’s her car, isn’t it? And the one kid said that she was Asian. I think it’s safe to assume it’s our girl.”
Ramon stared at the Civic for a moment before he glanced up the block at the apartment building.
“So she managed to follow us to the Paraíso, then followed us here to this apartment building. Why?”
Carlos shrugged, lighting himself another cigarette.
“I guess we’ll have to ask her the next time we see her.”
“When do you think that will be?”
Carlos looked up and down the block, exhaling smoke through his nose.
“After what we just learned about her? I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s watching us right now.”
Nineteen
The girl turns a corner and eases the car to a stop along the side of the street. She keeps her hands on the steering wheel, sitting ramrod straight, her eyes on the rearview mirror.
I ask, “What’s wrong?”
She keeps watching the rearview mirror.
“I want to make sure we’re not being followed.”
“We’re not.”
She breaks her stare with the rearview mirror to glance at me.
“How do you know?”
“I just do. I’ve been keeping an eye out ever since we took off. Nobody’s following us.”
Almost a half hour has passed since we raced away from that apartment building. We haven’t spoken once. The girl drove us through the city, away from the ghetto, toward a more respectable part of town.
I gesture at the houses along the street.
“You live in one of these?”
She shakes her head, puts the car in gear, and steers us back out into the street. She goes up one block, turns a corner, goes up another block, turns another corner, and the next thing I know she hits a button and a garage door farther ahead starts to open and she coasts right into the garage.
I’d caught a glimpse of the house before we entered the garage and was impressed.
“This your place?”
She shuts off the car.
“My grandmother’s. I’ve been staying with her the past two years.”
“What happened to your parents?”
Somehow I know the answer even before she answers in a soft voice.
“They’re dead.”
She turns to me, her face all at once serious. She’s in her early twenties, with dark eyes and long dark hair. She has a striking kind of beauty that makes me think she should be on the set of a telenovela instead of being chased by teenagers with guns.
She says, “Who are you?”
“Just a girl.”
“What you did to those men back there”—she shakes her head—“where did you learn to do that?”
“YouTube videos. Just search ‘kickass kung fu’ and you’d be shocked at what you can find.”
The girl stares at me.
I say, “What’s your name?”
She hesitates, clearly not sure she wants to tell me, and then says, “Gabriela.”
“I’m Samantha.”
The girl smiles.
“That’s not really your name, is it?”
I look around the garage. A Mercedes is parked next to us.
“I see your grandmother does well for herself.”
“Yes, she does.”
We step out of the car and I follow Gabriela into the house. The place is spotless. A TV plays from one of the rooms. Gabriela leads me into the room where an old woman sits in a chair swiping at a tablet.
“Grandmother, this is a friend from school. We’re going up to my room.”
The old woman smiles at me, says hello, and goes back to swiping at her tablet.
I follow Gabriela upstairs. Her room is bare. Besides a bed and a desk, there are two bookshelves filled with books but that’s it. No pictures on the walls.
She sets her phone on the desk to charge, drops into her chair.
“I know it’s not much to look at it. After my parents died and I moved in here, I didn’t unpack most of my stuff. I guess”—she shrugs—“I guess part of me felt that this would only be temporary. Like if I didn’t unpack, what had happened to my parents didn’t really happen.”
She shakes her head as if to clear it and turns to her computer. Powers it up, enters a password, and then brings up a browser. Seconds later she’s on the site that gives her access to the cloud. All the pictures she took today—at the motel and then at the apartment building—are right there on the screen.
I’m in only three of the pictures. Gabriela deletes them with a few easy clicks and then glances up at me.
“There, they are gone for good. Happy?”
I just stare at the pictures.
Gabriela says, “Are we done now?”
“What are these pictures for?”
Gabriela doesn’t answer.
I look at her.
“Why were you at the motel in the first place?”
She doesn’t look like she’s going to answer this question either, but then she frowns.
“Answer my question first.”
“Okay.”
“Why are you in Mexico?”
“I’m on vacation.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m a college student. I came here to see the sights.”
“You were the one who found the bodies. And then you followed those investigators to the motel. And then you followed me to that apartment building. That’s not normal college student behavior.”
“Really? Then what exactly was it you were
