Liquid Smoke

SIXTY-SEVEN

For three days, I wandered around the Vasquez home, looking at pictures, checking closets, waiting. Periodically I called Carter, making sure all was okay. They were twenty minutes away, in a hotel in Yuma, safe. The kids thought they were on vacation. Lucia seemed concerned but was making the best of it.

On the fourth day, I was beginning to think that what Carter had suggested was true. Maybe Keene was just coming down to attend to other business and I’d overreacted. Maybe he’d assumed that Liz’s death had sent me into a downward spiral since I’d disappeared and he was in the clear. Maybe I had unnecessarily disrupted the Vasquezes’ lives for my own agenda. But I’d told him about my conversation with Klimes and he’d gone through the trouble to blow up Carter’s car. I just didn’t think he’d run. It didn’t fit with everything else he’d done.

I decided to sit through one more night. Then, if nothing had happened, I’d call it off.

The house was mortuary quiet for most of the evening, just like all the previous nights. A few creaks and hums in the dark, but nothing more. I sat in the far corner of the living room, listening to the tiny sounds, wondering if Keene was coming.

It was just past four in the morning when I stopped wondering.

At first, I wasn’t sure I’d heard anything. I listened hard and it was quiet. But then I made out the faint scrape of a footstep outside the front door.

I lay down next to the couch, pressing myself into the floor. My eyes had adjusted enough to the dim light that I could see the doorknob move. It jiggled, the hand on the other side slowly working it back and forth. Finally, it gave.

I steadied the 9mm in my hands and aimed right at the door.

The door inched open, and initially it seemed no one was there. But my eyes focused, and I could see Keene dressed entirely in black. He’d made the mistake of coming in without his gun drawn. He shut the door behind him, not a sound coming from him or the door.

He turned away from the door and eyed the hallway. If Lucia and the boys had been there, Keene would’ve smiled and thought about how clever he was.

I squeezed the trigger and the quiet of the house exploded. The bullet hit Keene’s thigh with a wet thud, and he collapsed.

I vaulted off the floor and was on top of him immediately. His hands were grasping at his leg, and his eyes were wide with shock. I dropped my knee onto his thigh where I thought the wound was, and he howled. I slapped a hand across his mouth.

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” I said, grinding my knee harder into his leg.

He strained against me, ugly groans echoing against the palm of my hand.

“See you in a little bit,” I said, then dropped the butt of my gun into his temple.