No exploding ten-year-old head. No falling body. No blood.
Instead, Callahan blinked twice and opened her eyes, suddenly aware that the girl had completely vanished and that she, herself, was no longer standing between the two dilapidated shacks.
She sat on the floor of yet another alley. Her backpack was slung over her shoulder, her Glock safely tucked away inside, and she still held her phone in her hand, the GPS receiver showing that she was three streets away from where she’d stood only a split second ago.
What the
Lifting her free hand, Callahan stared at it. It was shaking uncontrollably. Much more than a tremor now.
Had she fallen
Right in the middle of a mission?
Had that whole episode with the girl been a hallucination? Some kind of bizarre, somnambulistic nightmare?
What else could it be?
Leaning back against a dilapidated, graffiti-covered fence-a fence she had no idea how she’d wound up sitting in front of-Callahan closed her eyes again, trying to find her bearings, trying to will the tremors away. Get them under control.
It’s okay, she told herself. Just a little glitch in the hardware. Nothing to worry about.
But who was she kidding?
This was no goddamn glitch. This was a sign of some very serious mental distress. Her problems with sleep depravation had just gone from a solid five to a record-breaking one hundred fifty in about two seconds flat. And if she wasn’t careful, if she didn’t get some fucking shut-eye
She could still see the little girl’s face in her mind. Those defiant, amber-tinged eyes. And she was certain she’d seen the girl before.
But where?
Then it hit her.
Callahan could see herself sitting in her bedroom in her childhood home, years after her father had died, staring into the vanity mirror above her dresser, hating what she saw, hating her life, hating that Dad had shot himself and left her behind with the Wicked Witch of the West. Wanting more than anything to join him in heaven.
The little girl in the alley was
As the realization of this wormed its way into her brain and lodged there, sucking away her self-confidence, Callahan tried to pull herself together.
This was no time to be having a panic attack or nervous breakdown or whatever the hell you wanted to call it. She needed to man up, right now, no excuses.
No. Fucking. Excuses.
Wishing there was a coffee hut nearby so she could order a double espresso with a shot of Red Bull-and knowing that was probably the
She got to her feet. Took several deep cleansing breaths, telling herself to let it go, that this would pass, that everything would be just fine from here on out-and knowing full well that it wouldn’t be. But that was okay. She’d gotten through a number of tough situations on a lie.
Like her entire life.
The trick now was to
Purging the face in the mirror from her mind, she consulted her GPS again, then took another deep breath and continued on her way.
She just hoped she wouldn’t wind up shirtless in a gutter somewhere with flies buzzing around her head.
De Souza’s compound sat on the side of a hill, a large, squat windowless gray building that had about as much personality as a World War II bunker. Several teenage boys formed a loose barricade out front, each carrying an automatic firearm.
Several others stood on the rooftop, their weapons ready.
They seemed to be waiting for her.
As she approached, keeping her hands at her sides, one of the older boys gave her the once-over and grinned, pleased by what he saw.
Another, younger boy, said, “This is not part of the tour, senhorita.”
“I’m here to see Jose de Souza.”
All the kids laughed, as if this were the most hilarious thing they’d ever heard. The older one had drawn closer now, still leering at her, and without even a hint of hesitation, he reached out and grabbed for her ass.
His hand was less than an inch away when Callahan caught hold of his wrist and twisted, pulling his arm behind his back as she quickly relieved him of his weapon and forced him to his knees.
Pointing the gun at his head, she said to the others, “De Souza. Tell him it’s about Gabriela Zuada.”
Calling Jose de Souza’s home a rat trap was being generous.
It was a tad less filthy than the rest of Paradise City, but that wasn’t saying much, and Callahan had to wonder why someone who was reportedly the highest-ranking drug lord in the area would be content to live in such squalor.
Despite a kind of dingy darkness to the place, there were some creature comforts in evidence. A sixty-inch plasma television played softly in a corner of the room, showing the never-ending news footage of Gabriela’s ongoing wake. Another corner sported an enclosed toilet, its door hanging open, the room surprisingly free of offensive smells. And a doorway to the left revealed a king-size bed, a couple dozen half-melted candles of various sizes lining a shelf directly above it.
A naked woman, with flawless, cocoa skin, lay fast asleep atop the mattress, her legs splayed out in front of her, leaving nothing to the imagination.
Spray-painted on the wall above the candles were yet more symbols-a pentagram, Lorraine cross, the now familiar
De Souza was a practicing Satanist.
But while the presence of these signs was certainly enough to raise her suspicions, it wasn’t proof that he’d had anything to do with Gabriela’s death.
Standing behind and to either side of Callahan were three of de Souza’s teenaged bodyguards, weapons in hand but pointed at the floor.
For now.
De Souza himself sat a few feet away from her, slumped in a battered armchair near the one and only window, which was really nothing more than a ragged rectangular hole in the wall that overlooked the
“I only agreed to see you out of curiosity,” he said.
He was a lanky guy, much younger than she had expected, with dark, curly hair and a wispy black goatee on his angular face. He wore only bright red boxers, and several nasty knife scars were visible on his chest and abdomen.
“About what?” she asked.
“Why you would assume I know anything about Gabriela Zuada?”
Callahan saw no reason to beat around the bush. “There are people who think you may be responsible for her
