“We’ll leave then.”
“I don’t think so,” the old man said. “We’ll have you as our guests tonight. And in the morning . . . we’ll talk.”
He turned and walked back toward his crowd of guests, who were getting barraged with a new round of champagne and appetizers, security guards circulating amongst them, assuring everyone they could forget the rude interruption of the escaped prisoner.
I caught Madeleine’s eye in the crowd. She appraised me coldly, then turned back to the crowd of young men who wanted her attention a lot more than I did.
“Quite a show,” Alex told me, amused. He raised one hand, and a heavyset security goon materialized at my right arm. “Virgil will show you to your room.”
I had a feeling Alex would’ve said your coffin with the same good humor.
I looked up at the balcony. A couple of other goons had already found Ralph and were marching him inside.
And Maia was gone.
Chapter 13
MAIA DIDN’T WANT TO HOLD THE BABY.
“Just ten minutes?” Ralph’s sister pleaded. She looked like a woman who’d just crawled through a wind tunnel full of baby food. “So I can take a shower? You’re a lifesaver.”
She handed over Lucia Jr., a bundle of grunting, kicking unhappiness, then disappeared down the hallway.
If Maia were in her place, she would’ve headed out the back door and driven away.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Maia told the baby.
“Ah-ba!” Lucia Jr. complained.
Maia wondered if her head needed supporting. No, that was with younger babies. Lucia was almost a year old. She could sit up, use a cup, all of that.
Maia had been reading so many damn baby development books, hiding them in the dirty laundry hamper whenever Tres visited, but she couldn’t remember anything. Law school had been a snap compared to studying babies. Babies made no intuitive sense.
Lucia Jr. kept kicking and squirming.
Maia propped her over one shoulder, holding her by her terry-cloth-covered bottom. She got out her key chain. Babies loved keys. She put Lucia on the sofa and sat next to her and offered the keys.
“Ah!” Lucia went straight for the pepper spray canister.
“No,” Maia said. “Not that.”
She detached the pepper spray and put it in her pocket and Lucia started crying.
“Aw, come on, honey. Look, keys.”
Lucia was having none of it. She wanted dangerous stuff or nothing. She was, apparently, her parents’ child.
Down the hall, plumbing shuddered. Water began to run.
Hurry, Maia thought.
She bought a few seconds showing Lucia the handcuffs she kept in her purse. Lucia seemed to think they tasted pretty interesting.
Maia cursed herself for promising Ralph she’d stop by. The sister was clearly doing fine with the baby. But Maia hadn’t been able to resist. Maybe it was her exhaustion, her frazzled state of mind, but earlier that evening, for the first time, she’d actually come close to liking Ralph Arguello.
THEY’D BEEN STANDING TOGETHER ON THE back veranda of Guy White’s mansion. Without the glasses, Ralph looked older, weathered, like a Native American in a nineteenth-century photograph, staring across a landscape that was no longer his.
“I screwed up,” he said, “cutting Titus loose.”
Maia felt so relieved she couldn’t speak. Never mind that Titus Roe had tried to kill her. Ever since she pulled him out of his Volvo, she’d known he was as much of an unwilling victim as she. She’d been foolish to bring him to White’s house—a sure death sentence. Ralph had spared him. He’d lifted a huge weight from her conscience, and she was completely unprepared to feel so indebted to a man she so disliked.
On the lawn below, Tres was arguing with Guy White, trying to keep the old man and his henchmen from Ralph.
Maia knew Tres would stand in front of a tank if it meant saving Ralph or her.
“Hell of a way for me to repay him,” Ralph said, following her eyes. “Tres kept me going, the last twenty-four hours. I haven’t done shit but cause him trouble since high school, and he still risks his neck.”
“I don’t think Tres would see it that way.”
“Stupid bastard,” Ralph agreed. “Doesn’t matter what I do wrong, he still backs me up. Covered my ass a million times. He makes me nervous.”
Under different circumstances, Maia might’ve found that funny. Ralph Arguello, nervous of Tres.
“Did Roe tell you anything?” she asked.
“He wasn’t going to. Said to go ahead and kill him, knew he was dead either way. Two years, three years ago, I would have shot him.” Ralph leaned against the marble railing, rubbed his face with his hands. “Having a family, Maia . . . I don’t know. First day I held Lucia Jr., it was like part of me went into her. Like she tapped me out. I can’t kill people anymore. Even with Johnny Zapata, I hesitated. I kept seeing my baby. Does that make any sense?”
Maia reached over and squeezed his hand.
At the base of the steps, Guy White was not getting any happier. His men were closing ranks around Tres, like they were about to put him under house arrest.
“You need to go,” Ralph told her. “Tres and I will manage. You gotta get out before White decides you’re his guest, too.”
“I can’t leave you two.”
“Keep searching. Check on the baby for me.” Ralph looked over, and Maia was surprised by the sadness in his eyes. “I’d do anything for Tres. Used to figure he would be the one with the normal life—marriage, kids. I figured he’d have those things and I could kind of enjoy them through him.”