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Sala scrambled backward. “I told him to search—”
“He didn’t find anything.”
Sala’s face darkened, and Diego kicked him in the side. Not too hard, not enough to do any permanent damage, but enough to hurt. Sala gave a yelp of pain and curled in on himself.
“He wants to know what’s in the documents.” Diego pulled out his gun. “He thinks you’re wasting his time.” And then he dropped down to his knees and slammed the gun across Sala’s face, hard enough that Sala’s nose cracked and blood gushed over his mouth.
“I’m not, I swear!” Sala tried to squirm away, but Diego pi
Diego paused, ready to hit Sala again. “The councilman? The guy from the commercials?”
“Yes!” Sala fumed. “But I’m not telling you any more, Mr.—”
Diego struck him rather than offer a name.
Sala bucked against the floor. “I can get the proof again,” he gasped. A few drops of blood sprayed across Diego’s face. “She wouldn’t let them go missing this long, no way in hell. Probably paid off the girl who stole them from me.” Sala pushed himself up to sitting. His arms trembled. Diego watched with that cold detachment he’d cultivated over the years. It wasn’t something that Mr. Cabrera’d had to teach him either—that, he’d learned as a child, scrabbling for his survival.
“That’s why you couldn’t find them,” Sala said, peering up at Diego, his eyes already turning dark and swollen. “The girl’d taken them over to her.”
“None of Mr. Cabrera’s girls would do that. They’re loyal.”
Sala laughed. Blood oozed between his teeth. “So maybe it wasn’t one of his girls. Maybe it was someone pretending, ever think of that? I bet some detective sent his secretary after me. Tell him to shake down the PI firms.”
Diego’s heart stopped beating. He took a step toward Sala.
“What?” he said.
“The girl who ran off with the proof!” Sala rubbed at his temple. “God, I should have seen it earlier. Marianella hired someone—”
“What’d she look like?” Diego wrapped his hand around the gun’s grip. Properly. The way you grip a gun for shooting. His thoughts whirred in panic. “The girl who ran off with your proof?”
“Why does it matter?” Blood gleamed on Sala’s face. “I told you, just go to the PI firms—”
“It matters.”
“I don’t kn-know,” he stuttered. “Young. Good-looking. She was wearing red lipstick.”
Diego thought about waking up in Eliana’s bed after a night out, his face and neck smeared with red. Red on the pillows and the sheets.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Diego stared at Sala, and Sala crawled backward across the floor, eyes darting back and forth. Looking for some weapon, probably. Diego couldn’t stop shaking. How could she be so stupid? So fucking stupid. He’d told her to stay away from Mr. Cabrera. That fucking PI who’d hired her had told her to stay away from Mr. Cabrera.
“You tell Cabrera,” Sala said. “Tell Cabrera about the girl. Once he finds her, then he’ll find the documents, I swear—”
Diego lifted his gun and shot him.
He did it without thinking. It was the idea of Mr. Cabrera finding out about Eliana that moved his hand, that pulled the trigger. If Sala was dead, he couldn’t tell Mr. Cabrera himself.
Diego stood up and reholstered his gun. Sala’s blood crept across the floor. Diego always felt disoriented after it happened, like he wanted to curl up and go to sleep. It’d been that way since he was a kid, but you did what you had to. Diego remembered the dismantled robot, the way its insides had glittered in the studio lights. It was the same thing he had just done, really, only broadcast on television. Maybe that was why he’d watched it.
Diego left Sala on the floor and walked out of the house. The street was still empty. No cars, no people. Just another desolate Hope City neighborhood.
The lights were still too dim.
Mr. Cabrera wouldn’t be happy about Sala’s death. Diego would have to come up with some excuse. But at least Mr. Cabrera wouldn’t find out about Eliana. At least he wouldn’t go looking for her.
Diego hoped.
CHAPTER SIX
ELIANA
Eliana waded through the golden grass, the train rumbling away in the distance. The brown envelope was tucked inside her coat. So was her gun.
She still couldn’t quite believe it had worked, the grab-and-run back at the Florencia. She’d gone back to her office afterward, locking the door and keeping the CLOSED sign displayed. Then she sat at her desk with the lights off and smoked a cigarette to calm her nerves. The envelope sat on the desk and seemed to hum along with the buzzing in Eliana’s head. She wanted to look. What could it hurt, as long as she didn’t tell anyone? She’d even held the envelope up to the weak, dim dome light filtering through her window, looked at the outline the document created against the brown paper.
In the end, she didn’t do it. Lady Luna had paid her too much. That meant it was probably something Eliana didn’t want to know about.
Now it was late in the day, coming on into evening, and her adrenaline had mostly worn off after a glass of beer and a couple of cigarettes down at Julio’s. The dusky light was both brighter and more subtle here than in the city proper. Soft and glowing like golden dust. It was a troubling contrast to the city lights, which had been dim and flickery lately.
Lady Luna’s house was as stark as Eliana remembered. She pressed her thumb against the doorbell and waited. Her heart fluttered. She didn’t know why she was nervous—something about that sea of golden grass, the imposing house, the whisper of wealth everywhere around her. Or maybe she thought Cabrera would come slinking out of the shadows, a gun pointed at her head.
Lady Luna answered the door. Eliana wondered where the andie had gone off to.
“Well, I’m a little later than I promised,” Eliana said. “But I got ’em.” And she pulled the envelope out of her jacket.
Lady Luna’s eyes went wide and bright. “My documents!” she exclaimed. “You recovered my documents!”
Eliana nodded.
“Oh, come in, dear. Let me get you something to drink. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.” She stepped away from the doorway, and Eliana slipped cautiously into the foyer. Everything glittered in the falling dome light. Eliana held up the envelope like an offering, but Lady Luna was already gliding down the hallway, calling over her shoulder, “Come along. I’ll set you up in the parlor.”
Eliana had no choice but to follow.
Lady Luna sat Eliana down in one of the curved Danish chairs and then disappeared into the hallway. Eliana balanced the envelope on her knee. The house was silent. Eerie. Why wasn’t the andie getting the drinks? It occurred to Eliana that maybe he wasn’t Lady Luna’s butler at all, but her companion. Eliana wondered how that would even work, from a physical standpoint.
“I’m so glad to see you got them back.” Lady Luna reappeared in the doorway, carrying a tray with a sleek metal teapot and a pair of teacups. She sat down next to Eliana and set the tray on the coffee table. “Where’d you find them? Was it terribly difficult?”
“Yeah,” Eliana said. “About that.”
Lady Luna looked at her with pure, lucid eyes.
“Do you know a guy named Pablo Sala?”
Lady Luna’s expression didn’t change. She stayed so still, in fact, that Eliana found it odd—suspicious, maybe, although she didn’t know why, or what the suspicious stillness could mean.
“No.” Lady Luna poured tea into one of the cups and handed it to Eliana. “No, I don’t believe I do.”