“Kim, do you know what he is?”
Her brows worked themselves into a delicate knot. “No. Not really. I just know that he’s very special.”
“He is,” I said, scooting closer. Not that I was about to tell her who he really was. What he really was. “He is very special and he can leave his body.”
She swallowed hard. “I know. I’ve known for a long time. And he’s very strong. And fast.”
“Exactly. And when he leaves his body, he’s even stronger and much faster.”
With a gentle nod, she let me know she was following.
“For that reason,” I told her, hoping I wasn’t about to break her heart, “he has decided to let his corporeal body pass away.”
Her red-rimmed eyes blinked in stunned silence before my meaning sank in. When it did, a hand shot up to cover her mouth and she stared at me in disbelief. “He can’t do that,” she said, her voice airy with grief.
I squeezed the hand still nestled within mine. “I agree. I need to find him, but he won’t tell me where his body is. He’s … injured,” I said, sidestepping the truth. She didn’t need to know how dire the situation was. How much time he didn’t have.
“What? How?”
“I’m not sure,” I lied. “But I have to find him before it’s too late. Do you have any idea where he might be?”
“No,” she said, her voice breaking as tears ran freely down her face. “But the U.S. marshal said he’s in a lot of trouble.”
My blood turned cold in my veins. Nobody, not even the state, knew Kim was Reyes’s pseudo-sister. She was completely off the grid. No contact. Reyes had insisted. And there were absolutely no records whatsoever that would connect the two. None that I knew of, anyway.
“And now this,” she continued, unaware of my distress. “Why? Why would he just leave me like this?”
Either that marshal was very good at his job, or he had inside information. I was going with the inside information because nobody was that good.
I wrapped her hand into both of mine. “Kim, I promise I will do everything possible to find him.”
She pulled me into a hug. I squeezed gently, afraid she would break in my arms.
* * *
I zigzagged through traffic on I-40, wondering how the bloody hell a U.S. marshal found out about Kim. The thought left me boggled. She was not easy to track down, and I had known about her beforehand. There just weren’t many people on Earth who did.
My phone sang out in the ringtone version of “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” I opened it, knowing Cook was on the other end. “Charley’s House of Ill Repute.”
“You need to pick me up,” she said.
“Are you trying to sell your body on the street again? Haven’t we talked about this?”
“A few weeks before Mimi moved to Albuquerque, a girl from her class disappeared.”
I downshifted and eased Misery into the right-hand lane to exit. “What happened?” I asked above the honking and shrill screams. “Need therapy much?” I yelled back.
“Nobody knows. They never found her body.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Yeah. It’s really sad. According to a five-year-old news article, her parents still live in Ruiz. They’ve lived in the same house for twenty years, hoping their daughter would find her way home.”
That was quite common, actually. When parents had no closure, they were often afraid to move for fear of their child returning to find them gone. “Closure, good or bad, is not overrated.”
“And guess what her name was.”
“Um—”
“Hana Insinga.”
Ah. The Hana part of Mimi’s message on the bathroom wall at the diner. “Be there in two,” I said before hanging up.
* * *
“Here’s the address,” Cookie said, climbing into Misery.
“Who’s going to man the phones?” I didn’t really care, but somebody had to give Cook a hard time, damn it. It may as well be me.
“I’m forwarding all the calls to my cell.” She had a stack of papers, file folders, and her laptop with her as well.
“It’s a good thing. I’m not paying you to tour the country like a rock star.”
“Do you pay me? I feel more like a slave.”
“Please, you’re way cheaper than a slave. You provide your own shelter, pay your own bills.”
Ever the multitasker, she stuck her tongue out and clicked her seat belt at the same time. Show-off. I saw an opening and floored it onto Central. Timing was everything. The files flew off Cookie’s lap. She grabbed for them then yelped. “Paper cut!”
“That’s what you get for sticking your tongue out at me.”
Sucking on the side of her finger, she cast a vicious scowl before pulling her hand back to get a good look at her injury. “Does workman’s comp cover paper cuts?”
“Do chickens lay snowballs?”
* * *
Just over two hours later, we were sitting in a charming living room in Ruiz with a lovely woman named Hy who served us Kool-Aid in teacups. Hy looked part Asian, most likely Korean, but her husband had been a blond-haired, blue-eyed pilot in the navy, and they’d met when he was on leave in Corpus Christi, Hy’s hometown set in the deep south of Texas. And she had the twang to prove it. She was tiny with a round face and graying black hair cut in a bob along her jaw. The white blouse and khaki pants she wore helped her seem younger than her years, though she looked as delicate as the teacups she handed us.