To my right, Oso scowled like a scorned father. To my left, Juan glared at me with a smug yet bitter grimace, a look that seemed to scream ”Well, who’s the dumb one now?”.

I stood in the blazing inferno between them, a stream of sweat gushing down my spine as I tried to put out two of the hundred fires lapping at my feet.

I swallowed my spit, pinching my throat to stop my voice from trembling.

“What are you doing here?” I asked Oso. “I told you to wait for me.”

“You said go get a beer,” he retorted. “This is a bar. I come to get a beer.”

I tried to gulp again but my throat was already dry, scorched by Juan’s glowering eyes. “Right.”

“What are you doing here?” Oso asked.

“I was on my way to get my pedicure,” I lied. “I saw Juan here, and thought I’d say hi.”

"Entonces, you think I am stupid," he repeated.

A lighter flicked in the corner of the bar, and Juan snickered as he lit the end of a cigarette. “She thinks everyone is stupid.”

“Say the truth, Baby Dog,” said Oso, dismissing Juan with a wave of the hand.

“We came to look for Mafer. Well, Mafer’s family,” I admitted, and then paused for a second, staring at my feet to avoid eye contact. “We just want to make sure they’re okay after... you know.”

Oso’s eyes turned to a straight-faced Juan, who’d just hidden his brief surprise behind a thick cloud of smoke. Juan tucked his cigarette at the corner of his tight lips.

Without a word, he turned around and searched through the pocket of the jacket he’d hung on the back of his chair. He pulled out a few folded sheets of paper, and a small envelope he tore open with the tip of his finger.

His eyes met with Oso’s as he pulled out a hefty wad of cash, and spread it out on the table.

“We just want to make sure they don’t starve,” he muttered.

After a single curt nod, Oso pointed his chin at Juan. “Y tú, ¿por qué estás aquí?”

And you, why are you here?

“Mafer and I, we had a thing going on,” Juan replied, as he rubbed a finger across his bottom lip. “Nothing serious, but you know. I liked the girl.”

Oso frowned. “I was think Majo is your girlfriend.”

Juan smiled uncomfortably, running his fingers through his hair before he leaned his elbow against the wall.

“Technically, Manée is my fiancée,” he scoffed, “but I’ve had a few affairs. I guess I just attract all the María-somethings.”

Just as I thought I was about to drop dead, my heart started beating again, although it was a timid, frantic flutter. Juan’s words wrung a crispated smile from Oso’s lips, and he relaxed his tense shoulders.

“Why you didn’t tell me, Baby Dog?”

“Pablo wouldn’t want me sneaking out to meet up with the relatives of the last person he murdered,” I answered. “And I didn’t trust you enough to keep it a secret.”

“I can keep it secret,” he shrugged. “I think it is a good thing.”

I choked back a sigh of relief. “Really?”

“Yes,” said Oso. “But I cannot leave you alone if you lie to me. If you do this, I come with you.”

Juan remained expressionless as he slipped the bills back in his envelope.

“If you tell Pablo a single thing, I will fucking kill you,” I spat.

Oso raised his eyebrows. “I think you have rabies.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I’m just a little tense.”

“Okay, rabie-baby,” he sighed. “Where we go now?”

I opened my mouth, but the words were missing. I turned to Juan instead.

“Unless you know where Mafer lives, we need to speak with Majo first,” Juan told him, pointing at a map printed on a crumpled page. “She’s the only one whose address we have.”

“I know where this is,” Oso nodded. “I can drive there.”

“Actually, I should drive,” Juan intervened. “You know, ’cause Pablo doesn’t track my car.”

With a reluctant grunt, Oso grabbed me by the arm and we followed Juan to his car, which was parked up further up a busy street, half-hidden in a side alley.

The drive was long, silent, and painfully awkward. Oso sat on the passenger’s side, and I tucked myself in a corner of the back seat. He kept turning around to make sure I was still there, as if jumping out of a moving car was something I’d ever try to do again.

The road stretched out of San José far enough for a fifteen-minute drive, and then it suddenly disappeared. We drove up some sort of mud paths, covered in jagged rocks and puddles that looked like ponds. It snaked up a steep mountain, with a sharp hundred-feet drop looming to our right, and was only wide enough to squeeze in a car and a half.

We stopped at a bend, where the road was larger, to let an old, battered minibus inch its way past us and continue its way down the hill. After watching our car fall down the ravine in a daydream, and hitting my head on the window at least a dozen times, I finally understood why these men drove big, 4-by-4 pickup trucks, and not fancy sports cars.

There was a small village on the flank of the mountain, hidden under ceibas and dried banana trees. Smoke wafted out the sides of rusty tin roofs, and the smell of burning wood filled the air as we approached.

A bunch of children flocked to the chickenwire walls of their makeshift classroom as we drove past them. A teenage girl, who was chasing a pack of stray dogs down the road by waving an old rag above her head, stopped in her steps when she saw us, and quickly scampered into the nearest house.

Juan’s keys jangled, and the truck came to a stuttering halt. We stepped outside, and the car’s doors locked with a loud chirp and a click. Save for a dog barking in the distance, the village was eerily quiet. The rumor of our arrival had spread with the wind, leaving nothing but ghostly shadows lurking around the corners.

“I think we should walk from here,” Juan mumbled. “I don’t want to get stuck in the mud.”

All of the houses in the village were ramshackle huts with cracked adobe walls, and dirty sheets instead of doors. Shredded plastic tarps flapped around in the breeze, muting the sounds of buzzing flies and the birds’ timid chirps. Flattened cans and plastic bottles crumpled under our steps, and grey water sloshed beneath our feet, slowly trickling from corroded pipes into overgrown ditches.

Juan winced as he looked around, like he’d catch a disease from just standing there, while Oso crouched down to poke at the dull red berries hanging from a wilting coffee bush. All around us, weary whispers ran through the village, like shadows darting between the trees.

An underfed, balding turkey gobbled at me, and I jumped.

“That must be Majo’s house,” Juan said.

He pointed to a large blue building at the end of the path. The bright teal walls looked like they had recently been repainted, and yet they were already crumbling away at the corners. There was old furniture on the flat roof, where they seemed to have planned for a second floor, but instead just left a line of bent iron rods poking out the top of the concrete parapets.

“Are you sure?” I asked him.

“It’s the best one in the village,” he sighed as he stepped over another stream of sewer water. “Pablo pays his maids well.”

“It doesn’t look very luxurious,” I muttered.

“He pays them well by local standards,” he shrugged. “Welcome to the real world, Emily Smith.”

An old lady sat on a splintered chair outside the house, shucking corn in the shade of her patio. Inside, I could see a kitchen with a dirt floor and dark walls blackened by either soot or mold. There, a younger woman was cooking something, while two toddlers, clad in soccer jerseys five sizes too big, grappled at her legs and tugged on her pink skirt.

“Buenos días,” said Juan. “Estamos buscando a María José. ¿Ella vive aquí?”

Hello. We’re looking for María José. Does she live here?

The lady didn’t answer. She lifted her head and her face tightened, smoothing out the thousands of wrinkles creasing her cheeks, and deepening the worried line across her forehead.

“¿Hablas español?” Juan asked.

Do you speak Spanish?

The lady answered with not a word but a nod. The young woman in the kitchen craned her head out of the doorframe for a second, before she disappeared inside the house, along with the two children.

“Solo queremos hablar, nada más,” Juan told the lady, his voice calm, deep and soothing.

We just want to talk, nothing more.

The lady stayed quiet, and the loose skin on her neck began to tremble. Whenever I looked over my shoulder, somewhere down the road, a pair of eyes would retreat into its house, as if we were playing the world’s creepiest game of Whack-A-Mole.

“¿Donde está Majo?” Juan asked again.

Where is Majo?

Faced with her quivering silence, we all grew impatient. I chewed on a piece of skin that stuck out the side of my thumb, Juan anxiously tapped the side of his jittery leg. Oso checked his watch for the twentieth time, and with an exasperated groaned, pulled his gun out of its holster.

“Habla, o te mato,” he spat.

Speak, or I’ll kill you.

“Oso!” I cried. “No death threats.”

“Ay, perdón.”

Oh, sorry.

He lowered his gun, but the lady kept the same blank expression that she had when it was still pointed at her head.

“Pueden averiguar en la casa,” she finally said. “Majo no esta aqui.”

You can check inside the house. Majo isn’t here.

“Entonces, ¿donde está?” Juan muttered.

Then, where is she?

The lady kept her lips sealed, and used a corner of her apron to dab away a single tear running down her cheek.

Juan pulled out the envelope from the pocket of his jacket. He counted a few bills, fanned them out, and handed them to the woman. “Tal vez esto le refresca la memoria.”

Perhaps this will refresh your memory.

She just stared at the money, remaining as still, quiet and expressionless as she had been for the entire conversation. She only flinched when the breeze picked up, and a door slammed inside her house.

My gaze followed a flock of black birds as they soared to the top of the mountain, and settled on a dot of color moving in the distance. Halfway up the hill, running towards the forest, I saw the woman in the pink skirt. She carried one toddler on her hip, and dragged the other behind her.

The child tripped on the hem of his jersey, and fell over. The woman stopped to pick him up, and even though she was already far away, I could see the sheer panic deforming her traits.

“Juan,” I whispered. “They’re terrified.”

“Of what?”

“Of us.”

He sighed, and quietly agreed by ducking his chin. He fished a pen out of his pocket, and scribbled some numbers on the corner of his envelope. He ripped away the piece of paper and left it on the ground in front of the lady, sitting a top a small pile of money.

“Si ves a Majo, dile que Juan Sandoval la esta buscando, y que me llame,” he mumbled. “Aqui esta mi número.”

If you see Majo, tell her Juan Sandoval is looking for her, and that she should call me. Here’s my number.

The drive back to San José was even quieter than the way here, if that was even humanely possible. Frustration and defeat weighed down on us all like a ton of bricks. We’d wreaked havoc in a small village, scared a poor family to death, and we still hadn’t gathered a single piece of intel.

We sat in the same bar where we’d started off, at the same old, sticky table at the far back of the small shop. Our lukewarm beers hardly tasted like a reward, and both Juan and Oso glared at me like this was all my fault. Which, to be fair, it probably was.

I felt stupid for pushing Juan and trying so desperately to convince him. I felt even worse for dragging Oso into this, and exposing not just him, but also myself, to even more repercussions. And of course, none of this would have happened if I hadn’t shot Mafer to begin with.

“What we do now?” asked Oso.

“I don’t know,” Juan grumbled. “Em, any ideas?”

“To be honest, even if I did have any ideas,” I sighed, swallowing the bitter aftertaste of stale beer, “I think it’s best if I just keep them to myself.”

“Maybe the real intel is the friends we made along the way,” Juan chuckled, glancing at Oso.

Oso glared back at him, cutting short to his faint laughter.

“Perhaps you guys should head home,” Juan sighed. “I’ll wait a little longer so no one suspects we were together. But I don’t think is worth the hassle.”

“Let’s wait a bit more,” I replied. “Maybe she’ll call.”

“He is right, Baby Dog,” Oso murmured. “It’s just money.”

“It’s not just that, Oso, I–” I said, as the truth balanced on my lips like an acrobat on a tightrope, threatening to fall right into Oso’s hands. “I just want to have that peace of mind.”

They shrugged, and Juan laid his phone in the center of the table. We stared at its dark screen for what felt like an eternity, or long enough at least for each of us to drink and order two more beers.

Finally, an unknown number called him.

“Give me a minute,” he murmured, and headed out into the street.

I wiped the sweat from my forehead with a paper towel, and gave Oso a meek smile. Part of me wished that he’d crack a joke, start singing a song, or really do anything to relieve the tension, but all he did was crack his knuckles, and glare at the wall in front of him.

Great, I thought. Now Oso is mad at me, and I have yet another fuck-up to deal with.

“What time is it?” I asked.

"Tree-thirty,” he replied.

Juan walked back into the bar, and I couldn’t tell whether he looked terrified or delighted.

“She’s here, in San José,” he said. “Just two blocks away. I told her to meet us here.”

I frowned. “Who, Majo?”

As if I had summoned a demon, the second I spoke her name, she turned the corner of the street. She had bags under her eyes, her unkempt hair had been dyed red, and she was wearing an old, ill-fitting dress.

The beaming smile on her face and the pep in her step disappeared the second she saw me, and she stopped dead in her steps in the middle of the bar.

“Y ellos, ¿qué hacen aquí?” she asked.

What are they doing here?

Juan almost looked professional as he sat down at our table, carefully stacking all the papers he’d brought with him.

“Solo queríamos platicar contigo,” he answered. “Estamos buscando un poco de información, específicamente sobre Mafer.”

We just wanted to chat with you. We’re looking for a bit of information, specifically about Mafer.

“Ah, ahora si, quieres platicar, va,” Majo groaned dramatically. “Y ni me vas a preguntar como estoy yo?”

Oh, so now you want to talk. And you’re not even going to ask how I’m doing?

Juan flashed a fake grin. “¿Como estas?”

How are you doing?

“Horrible,” she sighed, brushing back her hair as she sat down next to him. “Tus amigos no me dejan tranquila. Despedirme no era bastante, no, ya me siguen y me persiguen, hasta amenazaron a mi familia, y yo no ahorré bastante para mudarme a la capital. Estoy bloqueada aqui, viviendo en puro terror, solo porque una perra hizo una pendejada de más.”

Horrible. Your friends won’t leave me alone. Firing me wasn’t enough, no, now they follow me and chase me around, they even threatened my family, and I haven’t saved enough money to move to the capital. I’m stuck here, living in fear, just because some bitch made one mistake too many.

As soon as she finished her sentence, Majo glared at me.

“Lo siento, Majo,” Juan mumbled, as he gently stroked her arm to keep her attention. “Pero mira, si nos ayudas, te podemos ayudar también.”

I’m sorry, Majo. But listen, if you help us, we can help you too.

Juan spread all the cash he had left down on the table. Majo stared at it in silence, raising her eyebrows as she laced her fingers in front of her chest, and finally started to listen.

“Que quieres de mí?” she asked, her voice one octave lower now that she was acting serious.

What do you want from me?

Juan cleared his throat. “Que sabes sobre Mafer?”

What do you know about Mafer?

“No mucho, la verdad,” she shrugged. “¿Por qué no le preguntan directo a ella? Supuestamente son amigas.”

Not much, really. Why don’t you ask her directly? You guys are supposedly friends.

She rested her chin on her intertwined fingers, and stared at me.

“Mataron a Mafer,” Juan retorted. “El día después de que te fuiste.”

They killed Mafer. The day after you left.

Her bright eyes turned red, stinging with pain and fear. Her mouth bent strangely and quivered for an instant, before she opened it again.

“Yo lo sabía,” she spat. “Hace unos meses nos leímos las cartas del tarot, y le dijeron no involucrarse con su patrón, o que la mataría.”

I knew it. A few months ago, we had our tarot cards read, and they told her not to get too close to her boss, otherwise she’d get killed.

I saw Juan wearily glance at Oso, but only out of the corner of his eye. He offered Majo a drink from his beer, and she accepted without a second thought.

“Pero no solo trabajaba para Emilia,” Juan suggested.

But she didn’t just work for Emilia.

“Pues en los últimos meses, si,” she recalled as she softly batted her eyelashes. “Hacía unos mandados para el jefe también, pero no muchos.”

Well, in the last few months, she did. She did a few chores for the boss, too, but not that many.

“¿Qué jefe?” Juan asked. “¿Pablo?”

Which boss? Pablo?

Majo snorted. “Si, ese feo pisado.”

Yeah, that ugly bastard.

“¿Que tipo de mandados?”

What kind of chores?

“No sé,” Majo mumbled, wiping a drop of beer from a chin. “Cosas ekis. No me hablaba de eso.”

I don’t know. Random things. She didn’t talk about that with me.

Juan ran his tongue along the sharp edge of his teeth, looking as nervous as he seemed confused. Majo cocked his chin at him, probably waiting for his next question, but he remained silent.

“Did Mafer ever talk about Pablo?” I asked.

Majo arched one eyebrow. “¿Que dijo la cerota?”

What did the dumb bitch say?

“Que si Mafer te hablaba de Pablo,” answered Juan.

Whether Mafer ever spoke to you about Pablo.

A sly grin grew on her pursed lips, and the tip of her finger playfully traced a circle on the back of Juan’s hand.

“Ay si, siempre. La pobrecita era obsesionada. Siempre diciendo que el Señor Juaréz esto, y que no sé qué, y que su bigote, y que tan chistoso es, que tan guapo, alto, voy a ver a la piscina por si acaso anda sin camisa,” she giggled, as her head bobbled from side to side. “Dile eso a ella, a ver como reacciona.”

Oh yes, always. Poor girl was obsessed. Always talking about Mister Juaréz this and that, or whatever, and his mustache, and how funny he is, how handsome, how tall, let’s go to the pool and see if perhaps he’s over there, walking around shirtless. Tell her what I said, I want to see how she reacts.

Before Juan could react, I smiled at her. “Yo entendí.”

I understood.

Her mischievous grin faded away in the snap of a finger, and she turned back to Juan so I wouldn’t see her blush.

“¿Pero Mafer no tenía novio?” Juan asked.

But didn’t Mafer have a boyfriend?

“Si, me habló de ello,” she shrugged, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye. “Pero yo creo que soñaba con el suyo.”

Yeah, she told me about him. But I think she dreamed of being with hers.

She caressed the unspoken words that lingered on her lips with the tip of her tongue. She took a large swig of Juan’s beer, wiped her mouth with her sleeve, and slammed the bottle down on the table.

“Por eso la mataste, ¿verdad?” she asked me.

That’s why you killed her, right?

Her words felt like a cold blade pressing against my throat. I shook my head frantically, but Oso was already staring at me, piecing together a puzzle of clues within his own mind.

My cheeks turned bright red and my heart started to race, as shame, fear and rage weighed down on my chest.

“Don’t pay attention to her,” Juan murmured. “She’s just trying to make you jealous.”

“I think she’s telling the truth,” I breathed.

Majo rolled her eyes. “Bueno, ya tienen todo el chisme.”

Well, now you have all the gossip.

She stretched out her hand, wiggling her fingers as she waited for her reward to fall down in her palm.

“Are you sure she’s telling the truth?” Juan asked me.

“Certain.”

“Ya basta, hablen en español,” Majo hissed. “Aquí no estamos en Gringolandia.”

Enough, speak Spanish. We’re not in Gringoland here.

“Sólo dime donde vive la familia de Mafer,” he said to her.

Just tell me where Mafer’s family lives.

She bit her lip and chewed on her words, still eyeing the envelope like Gollum ogling the One Ring.

“La casa verde, justo al lado de la parada de buses en Los Olivos,” she admitted. “Es una aldea a cinco minutos de aquí.”

The green house, right next to the bus stop in Los Olivos. It’s a village just five minutes away from here.

“Gracias, Majo,” he said, and slipped the money into her open fingers. “Cuídate.”

Thanks, Majo. Stay safe.

“Gracias a tí,” she snickered, counting every bill in the envelope before she stood up. “Adiós, pendejos.”

Thank you. Farewell, fuckers.

A stunned silence lingered long after she left, like a trail of debris behind a tornado. Neither of us dared to look at another, or to speak, or even to breathe, for that matter.

“I’ll get more money for Mafer’s family,” Juan lied.

“Solo vamos a la puta casa y terminamos con esto,” Oso retorted. “Pero ya no quiero más mentiras.”

Let’s just go to the fucking house and be done with it. But I don’t want to hear any more lies.

Oso stormed out of the bar before Juan and I could even get up. He took a few, long breaths of air, sucking in the street’s smokey atmosphere, as if he’d breathed for the first time in a year. Anger still creasing his forehead, he waved us over to follow him, before plunging his hands in his pockets in search of a much-needed cigarette.

“Fuck,” Juan hissed. “He knows.”

“Yeah. But it’s okay,” I murmured. “Better that than wasting the opportunity, or we would have never found out.”

“I don’t know, Em, she could have been lying,” he mumbled.

“You’re in denial,” I seethed. “Let’s go to the house, and then you can be sure that I’m right.”

He shook his head. “This just means more problems down the road. You know, now that Oso–”

“Well, the problem’s already here,” I spat, pointing at Oso in the street. “Might as well get this over with.”

I smoked so much my throat began to burn. The three of us had blazed our way through half a packet in the few minutes it took to reach the address Majo had given us.

We parked our car in front of the only green house near the bus stop. It looked slightly better than Majo’s home, meaning that it had a front door and didn’t seem to be stuck halfway through construction.

I hated the house’s color, though. It was painted an aggressive apple green, with a reddish-brown trim that reached a third of the way up the wall, probably to hide all the stains of mud and smog spat out by the incessant flow of loud buses.

Juan rang the doorbell for a fifth time, and sighed. We could hear it chime inside of the house, but no movement ever followed. Oso checked his watch, and I grew nervous he might pull out his gun again, like he did the last time he’d grown tired of waiting.

“Just go in,” Oso groaned.

“We can’t just barge into their house,” I cried out in protest. “We’d be breaking in, in broad daylight.”

Juan stared at me, nodded, and tried to peek through a window.

“I can’t see shit,” he muttered.

“Juan, if they see you, you’ll scare them,” I hissed.

Before I could dissuade him from doing so, he opened the house’s front door.

“Well, if they were scared to begin with, they’d probably lock their doors,” he shrugged.

A blast of cold air rushed out of the front room, making all my hairs stand on end.

“Wow,” Juan mumbled. “They have AC.”

Both men walked into the house, and I hesitantly followed. Oso stayed quiet, standing guard in a corner with his arms crossed, meanwhile Juan touched, and poked, and checked every single thing he could get his hands on.

“And nice furniture, too,” he added.

“Is that weird?” I asked.

“Em, you were there when we saw Majo’s house.”

I frowned at him while he opened the drawer of a wooden cabinet, where nice cups and family pictures had been set up on shiny glass shelves.

“What do you mean?” I muttered.

“It looks like Mafer made more money,” he replied. “Like, a shit ton more money.”

A quiet oh escaped my lips, and I stared down at my feet. There was a cluster of brown stains on the white tile floor, as if somebody had spilled their coffee.

“Hola,” Juan shouted, craning his neck up a stairway.

The only answer he received was the echo of his own voice.

“There is nobody here,” Oso mumbled.

“Cool,” Juan retorted. “I’ll go check upstairs.”

Oso started to look through the drawer that Juan had left open, and I just glanced around the room.

It was a beautiful home, clean and cozy, with a fluffy rug in the center of the living room and a huge plasma-screen TV. It looked nothing like I had expected when I saw it from the street. A bit like Mafer herself, I noted, whose true personality was a stark contrast from what it appeared to be.

A weird smell floated in the air, and my nose wrinkled up as it caught a whiff of it.

“Do you think they left a while ago?” I asked Oso.

He shrugged, and opened the door to an adjacent room.

I looked over his shoulder. It was a bedroom. A small one, albeit comfortable, with nothing more than a bed and one small night table, which had been torn apart and its contents spread out on top of the sheets.

“Go get Juan,” he murmured as his eyes met with mine.

I called out his name as I walked up the stairs, but he didn’t answer. I found him standing still in a corridor, his eyes wide open and his mouth agape, as he stared into another room.

The bad smell was much stronger up here.

There was more blood on that bedroom floor than I’d ever seen in my entire lifetime. It spread out in a puddle, black and festering in the center, then red and brown where it had thinned and began to dry. It was splattered on the wall, surrounding a dozen bullet holes, and all the way up to the ceiling.

It drenched the pink princess sheets that had slid off one of the twin beds, and covered all the children’s toys, whether they were put away high up on shelves, or left lying on the floor.

There were no bodies left behind. Thank God, I thought. Just red tracks climbing up and out the window as if a giant slug had left a crimson trail of slime.

My voice cracked before I could even speak. I choked on a tear and on the smell of death, and tugged on Juan’s sleeve.

“Let’s go,” I breathed.

The tears in his eyes seemed to have crystallized and glazed over, and his gaze remained lost in the distance even after I had dragged him downstairs.

“Did you find something?” asked Oso.

“Yeah, just–” I stammered. “Don’t go upstairs. I think they’re all dead.”

“You think?” Juan blurted out.

His chest heaved with distressed breaths, and he leaned heavily against a dining room table, body convulsing with tears and gasping for air between his silent sobs.

“I found this,” Oso murmured, as he handed me an ID card.

“That’s Mafer,” I said, looking at the picture.

Oso pointed at the name on the ID card, and read it out loud. “Valentina Guadalupe Morales Castillo.”

“Mafer wasn’t her real name?” I asked.

Oso shook his head, and handed me his phone.

Valentina Morales, who had the same kind eyes and silky hair as the girl I’d spent hours with, chatting about life and playing Tic-Tac-Toe, was one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives.

The list of her crimes seemed to be unending. Murder, narco-terrorism, espionage-related offenses. Drug, arms, and human trafficking. Suspected of being a high-ranking member of an unnamed cartel. And that was all the way back in 2017.

She was twenty-eight years old, and not nineteen or twenty-one like she’d told me, and was unable to keep her lies straight.

Mafer the maid, the girl I had known and cared for never existed. She was just a cover for an unscrupulous criminal who didn’t want to spend a few lifetimes in a high-security prison.

Oso laid his hand on my shoulder, and I put the phone down on the table. Juan glanced at it, and his sobbing stopped.

“Fuck, Em,” he breathed.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured.

“I mean...” he stammered. “This– this is even worse than you thought.”

I let myself fall down onto a couch, right next to a trail of bloodstains, which made my stomach churn and my skin turn the same color as the sofa’s white velvet.

“We should go, Baby Dog,” said Oso.

Neither of us spoke another word until we were back in San José. By then, Juan had left us, and I was sitting in Oso’s car, watching him as he stared at the lake, waiting until he started his engine.

“So, you killed Mafer?” Oso asked me.

I looked down at my fingernails, chewed all the way down to the flesh. “Yeah, but–”

He lifted his hand up, and I stopped talking.

“Good,” he said.

He fidgeted with his car keys, lost deep in his thoughts.

“Wait for me here,” he mumbled as he unbuckled his seatbelt.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“To buy nail paint,” he said. “So Pablo will believe the pedicure.”

Kerning

Evil Doesn't Knock

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