“What did he find?” I ask a little too sharply.
She doesn’t seem to notice. “He wouldn’t tell me everything. Says he needs to talk to me this weekend. But he said that he doesn’t think it was a Mexican cartel. He thinks it was the mafia.”
This is new. “The Italian mafia?”
“I guess. He said he found a news report from 2014 that mentioned our father in conjunction with a kidnapping attempt.”
“Kidnapping?” Jesus. That wasn’t in the files I found. Then again, most of the information my father had was about Ellie, not Camden.
“But my brother said it was cleared, like a mistake or something, and it was actually two brothers who had ties to the mafia that kidnapped a woman and her son.”
“Violet.” I put my hand on her thigh, squeezing it lightly. “When did you find all this out?”
“Like I said, I had the article for a while but Ben called me last night to tell me the rest.”
“So you have to confront your parents…”
She shakes her head. “No, I need to know more. Ben can find it out. You can find it out.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re Mexican.”
I let out a sharp laugh. “Just because I’m Mexican doesn’t mean I know anything about drug cartels.”
Wry disbelief is etched on her face. “Oh, please. You can’t tell me all about your father and his so-called business and not have me thinking a few things.”
“But the article your brother found—”
“I know. But the article I read, the one here,” she picks up her phone, “mentioned a Mexican cartel. I just want to know something, anything.”
“And then what happens? What if you find out it’s the Sinaloa cartel? Or the Zetas? Or who knows what fucking cartels existed way back when. Then what? You going to stroll down to Mexico and go knocking on their doors?”
And then, as I’m saying those words, it dawns on me.
Shit. Has Violet been playing me? Has she let all of this, all of us, happen, because she thinks I might lead her to the truth?
If only she knew how close she was.
I can never let her know.
She sighs, shaking her head, eyes getting watery.
Fuck.
I rub my hand up and down her thigh. “Hey. Look. I’ll…ask my father. How about that?”
Oh, if only you fucking knew.
“No, no,” she says. “You just said you don’t get along. I’ll just…it doesn’t matter. I’m just scared.”
“It’s natural to be scared when you’re presented with a lie. Especially when it turns your world upside down.”
She sucks in her lower lip, staring across the bay. “Someone was following me last night.”
“What?” I jerk to attention, my fingers digging into her leg. “When?”
She frowns at the pressure and I ease off. My heart is starting to pound.
Following her? Could it be one of my father’s men already?
“Last night,” she says. “When I was on the phone with Ben.”
“I dropped you off at home,” I tell her roughly, angry she didn’t go straight in.
“I know, but I was too…excited. To sleep. So I walked up and down Haight to burn off the energy.”
“You should never walk there alone.”
Her withering stare cuts into me. “Oh, come on. Sorry, Vicente, but I’ve been taking care of myself just fine before you came along. You don’t even know the city. I do. It’s my home.”
“Two bodies were found shot in the head in the park close to your house,” I tell her. “The person who killed them is still out there. You just said you were scared.”
She rolls her eyes. “People always die in that park. Drug overdoses or drug deals gone wrong, there’s no difference. And those people, they were just passing through…” She trails off. “They were Mexican, weren’t they?”
“I don’t know, the news never identified them.”
“It doesn’t matter. And the guy who was following me wasn’t Hispanic at all. He was white. Very white. Like, albino white. Not that it matters, I guess.”
Albino? If anyone should be here and on my case, it’s Parada or maybe Barrera. Definitely not an albino.
This isn’t good.
If she’s honestly being followed, it makes my job that much harder.
“How do you know you were followed?”
“Because where I went, he went. Up the street, down the street, across the street, back and forth. I ducked into a store and hid, and he came inside too. I had to wait for the right moment and then I ran out. He stopped following me at that point but he was definitely following me up until then.”
This guy isn’t from any cartel, not my father’s anyway. He sounds too sloppy. And I haven’t been followed at all. I would know. It’s what I’ve been trained for.
So why would someone follow her?
This is getting messy. I need to simplify things.
“I wouldn’t worry too much about it,” I tell her. “I’ll worry for the both of us.”
“Yeah, right. Okay. Sure.”
“You told me yourself that you’re sensitive and overly observant, and I know those things are true. I’m not saying that this didn’t happen to you, but for now, you have to keep in mind that it could be a by-product of your imagination. That this man wasn’t following you. That it was a coincidence.”