Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales (34 page)

—Charles Vess.

K
AMI
G
ARCIA

I’ll never forget the first person I killed. The world went silent, and there was nothing but the sound of my heart pounding and his body hitting the floor. I spent days picking the dried blood from underneath my fingernails afterward.

I was barely sixteen, but I only had one regret.

I should’ve done it sooner.

It was after midnight when I finally made it back
from the Triangle—twelve blocks where the city’s roughest neighborhoods converged, and a haven for drug dealers, hookers, and junkies. Not the kind of place most fathers sent their daughters, unless your father was a sick son of a bitch who took in foster kids to pay the rent and score him drugs.

I stared at the bare bulb above the front door. It flickered like it was as scared to burn out as
I was to go inside.

“Petra?”

Will stepped out of the shadows, his lip cut and the skin around his dark eyes ringed in fresh bruises.

I came down the steps and reached out to touch his face. “What happened?”

He caught my hand and pulled it behind his back, drawing
me closer. “Jimmy and I got into it again. Same shit, different day.”

I kissed the cut on his lip. “I wish you didn’t have to let
him do this to you.”

Will shrugged, long hair hanging in his eyes. “Don’t have a choice.” Not while his little brother lived in Jimmy’s house—that was the part he didn’t say.

He leaned his head against mine. “Let’s get outta here. Tonight. After Jimmy passes out, we can take Connor and go.”

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine a life without dirty needles on the kitchen counter and puke all
over the bathroom floor—a life without Jimmy.

“We don’t have enough money yet,” I said. “And we can’t squat in abandoned buildings with your eight-year-old brother.”

“Maybe it’s better than this.”

The words hung in the air.

Years later, they would still haunt me.

I looked up at the lightbulb again. “I should get inside. He’ll only get worse if he doesn’t get a fix.”

Will nodded. “I’m gonna
find somewhere to crash tonight.”

I pressed my lips against his one last time.

Will walked down the sidewalk backward, smiling at me, until he disappeared into the night.

When I opened the door, Jimmy was waiting at the top of the stairs tweaking and sweating pomade, his rayon dress shirt buttoned on the wrong buttons. “Where the hell have you been? You got my shit?”

I handed him two cellophane
bags, hoping he would lock himself in his room and speedball his way through what was enough coke and heroin to kill any normal person.

Instead he grabbed my arm, his dirty nails digging into my skin. “This won’t even get me through the night.”

I shrank away. “You only gave me a twenty.”

Jimmy tightened his grip and dragged me down the hall. “Doesn’t matter. Castillo’s gonna hook me up after
I hand you over.”

My blood turned to ice in my veins.

I had heard about the girls who disappeared in the run-down houses Castillo controlled in the Triangle. Most of them went inside looking for drugs. Then there were the others—girls like me who were handed over like crumpled twenties.

By tomorrow night, I would be lying in a filthy bed in one of those houses, drugged out of my mind and offered
up to any scumbag that walked in the door.

“Jimmy, please—”

His fist slammed into my jaw. A rush of pain shot up the side of my face, and I stumbled back.

He caught me around the waist, pinning my arms against my body. “I waited two years for you to hit sixteen.” He slid something out of his pocket—a needle filled with enough of his poison to leave me unconscious, or at least compliant.

I
twisted and squirmed until one of my arms slid free. The table where Jimmy kept his works was only a few feet away. I reached for the edge, trying to pull myself away from him.

Something rolled under my fingertips, and my hand closed around it.

I plunged it down over and over.

I didn’t stop when I felt the pen slide into Jimmy’s flesh. Or when he jerked away, screaming.

I didn’t stop until
the pen slid from my blood-soaked hand.

Killing a man is easier than you think. It happens fast—in the span of a few heartbeats.

I don’t remember grabbing my backpack and leaving the house, or much of anything in the weeks that followed. I stayed in a shelter until they started asking questions. After that, I slept in Dumpsters and ate out of trash cans behind a Chinese restaurant.

Every night,
I fell asleep picturing Will’s beautiful face, promising myself I would go back for him. But those dreams morphed in the darkness, and every morning I awoke in a cold sweat with the memory of Jimmy’s dead eyes staring back at me.

Whatever hope I had of seeing Will again was just that—hope. I was a murderer and possibly payment for one of Jimmy’s drug debts to Francis Castillo.

There was no going
back.

Three months later, I met Kate. She never told me much about herself, except that she had left home at fourteen and figured out a way to make enough money to buy her meals instead of scavenging them. Turned out, I had a talent for stripping cars. If we picked the right ones, it paid well enough for the two of us to pool our money and sleep in cheap motel rooms.

Until the night everything
changed again.

I was working the rims off an expensive SUV when I heard a voice behind me. “Need some help?”

I whipped around, wielding the wrench in my hand like a bat. The guy towering over me looked like he was in his thirties and had missed a few shaves.

The guy pointed at the rims. “You know the trick to that?”

“What?”

He flashed his badge. “Don’t get caught.”

I turned to run, but he
caught my arm before I got more than a few feet.

“Please don’t arrest me,” I begged.

He hesitated and really looked at me. “How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“Where are your parents?”

It was a question I had been asked a hundred times. The answer never got any easier. “I don’t have any.”

“You don’t have any, or you don’t like the ones you’ve got?”

For once, I had the truth on my side. “My mom
was a junkie. I grew up in the system.”

He loosened his grip on my arm without releasing me. “Criminals and cops have something in common. They both see the world in black and white. Only difference is their white is our black.” His face softened.

“Maybe you’re just on the wrong side of the line.”

Four years later, his face is harder, from a combination of too many nights working undercover
and too many bottles of whiskey, like the one on the table between us. But now we’re on the same side of that line, and I’m a cop instead of a criminal.

Bobby saved my life that night. I’ll never understand why he gave me a place to live and a chance to turn so many wrongs right.

I know something is bothering him because he’s not talking, the thing Bobby does better than anyone.

He pours himself
another shot and downs it. “We’ve got a chance to get someone on the inside. Castillo’s triggerman turned up floating in the river the day before yesterday.”

Castillo.

“Are they sending you in?” I ask.

“No. They need someone who knows the players and the
neighborhood.” He takes a swig straight from the bottle. “Someone with a range score above ninety-two.”

It feels like someone sucked all
the oxygen out of the room. “I’m the only person with a range score that high.”

He won’t look at me. “I know.”

It’s too much.

Castillo and the Triangle. Kidnapping girls no one will miss and selling them like raw meat—and they were the lucky ones. The rest ended up in the high-rises, their veins full of junk, servicing Castillo’s crew and anyone else willing to pay.

I was almost one of those
girls.

“Wait.” I hold up my hand. “Castillo won’t trust somebody off the street. I’ll have to prove myself.”

Bobby raises his eyes to meet mine, hope and shame so tangled together that it makes my stomach turn. “I know.”

I’ve only killed one person, and I can still hear him screaming.

I push my chair back, and it drags across the floor. The bartender glances over, and I lean closer. “You’re
asking me to execute people,” I hiss under my breath.

His jaw sets, transforming him into the cop who can convince even the most hardened criminals that he’s one of them. “You wouldn’t be killing people. The guys Castillo works with are scum. Dealers. Rapists. Cop killers. The way I see it, you’ll be doing the world a favor.”

Bobby has to see it that way, or he won’t be able to justify what
he is asking me to do.

Twenty years on the street changes a person, especially a cop. Bobby had seen things that kept him walking the halls at night and swimming in a bottle during the day.

“What happened to all that shit you told me the night we
met about criminals just being on the ‘wrong side of the line’?” I ask.

Bobby stands up and lights a cigarette, tossing a few bills on the table.
“You don’t believe that anymore, do you?”

Francis Castillo isn’t what I expected. Clean-shaven and handsome, in a dark suit and pressed shirt, he looks more like a businessman than a psychopath. He’s sitting in the back of Machiavelli’s flanked by his lieutenants, sipping espresso and reviewing spreadsheets. The restaurant isn’t open yet, chairs still flipped over on the tabletops while the staff
bustles around in the kitchen.

He glances up at me and turns back to his paperwork. “A woman. I like that. No one expects a face that pretty to be the last one they see.”

Castillo hands the guy to his left a folded slip of paper. “Set her up with whatever she needs.”

I play the part—sugar laced with a little cyanide, that’s what he’s looking for. I let my eyes drift across my cleavage and down
to the holster inside my leather jacket. “I’ve got everything I need right here, Mr. Castillo.”

His expression changes and even in his two-thousand-dollar suit, I see the hunger in his eyes that led him here. “I bet you do.”

I follow Castillo’s lieutenants, aware that his eyes are still on me. Another one of his thugs comes in as we’re leaving and holds the door open for us.

“Is he in the back?”
the guy asks.

The voice slams into me like a fist. I look up slowly.

Will’s dark eyes stare back at me from inside a man’s body. The boy I never stopped loving.

Will can’t hide his shock, and I look away, breaking the connection for both our sakes.

The lieutenant nods. “He’s waiting on you.”

I’m still reeling a few hours later, while I wait for my mark at a deserted construction site. I was
right about Castillo. He’s not a trusting guy, and my first job is only hours after our meeting.

I force myself to stop thinking about Will and concentrate on what I found out about the guy I’m supposed to kill. Torres owns a couple of the high-rises where Castillo houses his prostitution operation. A few days ago, one of the buildings was raided and the cops hauled this loser in for questioning.
My guess is that Castillo either thinks Torres made a deal or is thinking about making one.

The office goes dark, and Torres comes out of the trailer.

I try to wrap my mind around what I’m about to do—shoot a man in cold blood.

Not a man. A monster.

The voice is so faint I barely hear it. I turn around and scan the area, but there’s no one out here except Torres. He’s on his cell, standing
in front of the trailer like a bull’s-eye.

Anyone with a passing range score could hit this guy from where I’m standing.

I take a deep breath and raise my gun.

Even in the dark, I can see my hand shaking.

If I don’t do this, I’ll blow my cover. I need to hear Castillo order a hit, or he’ll keep hurting girls who aren’t as lucky as I was.

I’m holding the grip so tight that my fingers go numb.
I drop my arm and slip behind the Dumpster next to me. I close my eyes, the metal cold against my back.

“You don’t have it in you.”

My eyes fly open.

A guy stands a few feet in front of me. There’s something in his hand.

Instinct takes over. “Drop it.”

He cocks his head to the side and smiles as he raises his arm.

I squeeze the trigger. Even with a silencer, I can hear both shots. The bullets
pierce his black V-neck sweater square in the chest. I wait for his body to fold from the impact, for him to stagger and fall.

None of those things happen.

He takes a penny out of his pocket and winks at me. “For your thoughts.”

He must be wearing a vest.

But he didn’t even flinch.

“Don’t move,” I say. “Or they’ll be picking up pieces of you all over this parking lot.”

He raises his hands,
palms facing me. “You’ve got me.”

Before I have time to fire off another shot, he yanks the sweater up so I can see his bare skin.

There’s no vest.

And no blood—

I pull the clip out of my gun and check it to make sure I’m not losing my mind. Two rounds are missing.

“You shot me, Petra. I think we both know that.” He lets his sweater fall and snakes his thumb through one of the bullet holes.

It’s not possible.

I try to bridge the gap between logic and what I just saw. It has to be some kind of trick.

He brings a finger to his lips, signaling me to be quiet. “You
don’t want to disturb Mr. Torres over there. He’s engaging in a very sensitive call with a tantalizing young lady, who is actually a young man in Ohio.”

“Who the hell are you?” The words tumble out before I can stop them.

“I’m a businessman, but I like to think of myself as a problem solver. And you have a problem I can solve.”

“What are you talking about?”

He gestures in Torres’ direction. “You need him dead, and you can’t kill an innocent man, though I’m using that term loosely. I can take care of him for you and no one has to know. But you have to give me something in return.”