Shatter Page 13

  Cordero smirks. “I think he’s a coward.”

  Twisting the deadbolt into place, Cordero sets a chain lock above it—a chain lock I didn’t notice before. I could have kept him outside until he answered one of my questions. I curse myself.

  As soon as he’s inside, he heads for the stairs.

  I follow, hot on his trail. I knew it. He’s not going to tell me anything. He’s not working with me—he’s using me. I charge up the steps. What do I do now?

  The house is darkening rapidly now that the sun has set. At the top of the stairs, a loud voice begins talking. “And you’re back—”

  I jump. Cordero spins around, muscles ready for a fight. The lights come on.

  “—with Channel Five News,” a female reporter-voice continues, permeating the house from a television in the living room under us. “Coming up: a live view of Senator Lethco touring Verona businesses that support the strike.”

  The television and the lights are on some kind of automatic timer. An anti-theft device supposed to make the house look inhabited.

  The interruption has left me trembling. Cordero glances at me with a serious expression and heads down the hall. I follow him.

  “You have to answer my questions,” I say.

  He keeps going, past the first door. There’s only one left.

  “You’re not even listening.” I pass him and position myself so that we’re face to face in front of the final door. His gaze is steady and dark.

  “Tell me how you know Carrie.”

  He pauses long enough to make me anxious. “I work in the fields sometimes. She came once with some union officials. She decided to hire me.”

  “You must have told El Payaso about her then. He knew her name.”

  He blinks in surprise. “Talking to El Payaso was not smart.” He leans closer. “I’ve never talked to him, about anything. Because I am smart.”

  I roll my shoulders to try to release the tension in them. “He knows Carrie.”

  His dark gaze holds a warning, maybe even a sense of concern for my safety. “But he was not her friend. He’s no one’s friend.”

  “We … we saw El Payaso’s gang initiation,” I admit. “Carrie and I did. He’s only a year older than her. Maybe he just knew her name from school.”

  He nods in approval, like I’ve just admitted I won’t go cornering El Payaso. “Now I’ve answered your questions.” He takes hold of the doorknob to the bedroom.

  I move closer, which makes my arm brush the hand he holds the knob with. “You told me you were going to show me what you took too.”

  A dangerous glint gleams in his eyes. “I never said that. I am going in the room. You are not.”

  “There’s nothing for you to take in there anyway. I already looked.”

  Cordero leans over me with dizzying speed, accent thicker because of his emotion. “I’m not taking anything.”

  “You’re lying.”

  He drops his act, expression probing. “How involved do you want to be? There are things you can’t unsee.”

  I’m not expecting this. So I’d be in danger, knowing what he knows?

  “I have to know what happened to her,” I say simply.

  He hesitates, with almost compassion showing in the corners of his lips. Then his eyes harden. “Too bad. I don’t trust you.”

  I reach for the door handle, but he’s too fast. The door is open and he’s inside the room slamming the door in my face before I can blink. The handle is smooth, with no lock mechanism.

  I burst into the room to follow him. “Me? You don’t trust me?”

  He’s across the room, on the other side of the bed. Stooping, he lifts the top mattress, sending the pillows rocking. His backpack hangs from the crook of his elbow, unzipped, waiting to house whatever he’s looking for between the mattresses—the most classic hiding place ever.

  “You have searched the room already.” Hidden by his fist, Cordero’s coveted item falls into his backpack with a jingle. He straightens with a smirk at me. “Are you trying to say you trust me?”

  We square off with me solidly in front of his only exit from the room. The item jingled. Keys? A bracelet?

  “It doesn’t matter who I trust,” I say, pressing the small of my back into both my hands clutching the door handle and stalling for time. “You have all the cards here. You have all the cards everywhere.”

  I hate myself, my fear, my stupidity for not looking under the mattress. I hate the power of Cordero’s presence, a power I can never match.

  I hold the door handle tighter and nod at his backpack. “You show me what’s in there and you lose nothing. You know it.”

  His jaw twitches, perhaps in fear. “You have no idea.”

  I frown. “Yes. That’s that point. I have no idea how my sister was murdered.” Even as I speak, I process what he could have meant. He’s afraid. Cordero doesn’t have power everywhere, and I already know that. Tito beat him up. Who is Cordero afraid of now and why does the item he’s taking matter?

  He jukes left then right. I don’t fall for it. I stay right in front of what he wants—escape.

  “Move away from the door,” he says.

  “I know you won’t hit me.” I’m sort of bluffing.

  He’s furious. “Move.”

  Turns out I was right about him not hitting me. If I trust him, how can I get him to trust me?

  “We can’t stand here all night,” I say. “Dad will come home. Find you. Find what’s in your backpack. Probably call the police. Let me help you. I won’t say a word to anyone.”

  With a glance over his shoulder at the bed and window above it, he backs away a step, the coveted backpack swinging on his arm. I realize he’s thinking about escaping through the second-story window. He’s definitely on edge.

  “The police?” I ask. “That’s what you’re afraid of?”

  His eyes blaze. “I didn’t hurt Carrie.”

  “Then show me what you’re taking.”

  “Don’t you remember? You don’t trust me. I don’t trust you.” Another glance at the window. The way it’s situated above the bed gives him an advantage in getting there, but the stained wooden frame is heavy and looks swollen, partially obscured by limp white curtains. No way he can open the window and keep me away from the backpack—not without a serious fight. Anyway, I believe him. That he didn’t hurt Carrie.

  But he definitely is afraid of something. It’s a two-story drop from the window, and I’m hardly a physical threat. I wrack my brain for an answer.

  He opens his mouth to answer me, and then makes a break for the window. I’m a step late, thinking he’ll double back to the door, but he kneels on the bed. He muscles up the windowpane eight inches, bringing the sweet smell of peaches. The backpack is cradled in front of him like a bundled infant. I follow him, my emotions snapping.

  “I have every right to see what you’re taking—more than you!” I yell, bouncing onto pillows next to him, reaching for the backpack. In my maneuvering, I nearly hit the blinking panic button on the headboard with my wrist. I gasp when I see it. If he gets out the window, he’ll be gone from the house in two minutes.

  How fast can an alarm company get the police here?

  “Leave!” His biceps twitch with effort. The window gives once more, this time opening up two feet of clear space. There’s not even a screen. Just a waiting bush far below in the dusk next to a concrete path leading to grass.

  “You used me to get into the house. You think I won’t use you?” I hold my hand over the panic button, still unsure.

  He notices my focus.

  With a sudden twist, he shoots a hand toward the headboard, no doubt to block me from the panic button. He must think it’s an item that I could threaten him with.

  “Wait,” I cry.

  Too late he realizes his mistake. His open palm slams into the button and an alarm blasts with debilitating volume.

  His gaze meets mine, panicked.

  “I wasn’t going to hit it,” I sa
y. I wasn’t, was I?

  He winces in fury. At me? At himself?

  I rip the button’s cord from the wall. The alarm doesn’t stop.

  “Don’t follow me!” he yells at me, uncertainty in his eyes. He scrambles off the bed. He runs to the now unblocked door.

  I race after him.

  “I’ll distract anyone looking for you. We’re on the same side!” I shout over the noise of the alarm, pulse racing. I have to get to that backpack.

  He runs across the balcony, ready to hit the stairs with a fifteen-foot head start. Pausing at the top of the stairs, he points at me like I’m a misbehaving child and yells in Spanish.

  I translate automatically. “Stay here for my own good? Are you kidding me? For your good, you mean.” My phone vibrates in my pocket. It’s probably Dad, this time calling because the alarm company has contacted Elena about the panic button being activated. “You think I’ll never learn who killed her so I’ll be safe?”

  He turns from me to bound down the stairs, now only ten feet in front of me. I’m still on the balcony itself, not the stairs—not good enough, not fast enough. Still running, I glance over the balcony railing at the view of the first floor. If I were down there already, I could cut off Cordero’s nearest escape. I could make him see reason.

  I change my momentum.

  I palm the balcony railing and vault. With the banister still at my fingertips, I know I’ve made a mistake. I’m about to overshoot the couch below me. Frantic, I clutch the railing, trying to reign in my momentum. I pull too hard. My lower half whips toward the wall. My legs crash into the cut glass mirror mounted below. Pain makes me lose my grip. I free fall. My body scrapes down the broken mirror, which makes a popping noise. It jolts, threatening to break free of the wall.

  The couch resists my arrival with a will I hadn’t expected.

  I scream as I’m pitched face-first into cushions on the back of the couch. There’s blood splattered from the back of my wrist up to my shoulder and a blaring voice to my left. I look. It’s the news program on TV. The volume is deafening. It nearly drowns the sound of the alarm. No one would have the volume that high unless they truly feared intruders. Senator Debbie Lethco’s features fill the flat screen, earrings swaying with each emphatic nod of her head. She’s in a parking lot filled with crowds under temporary lights. I recognize the location. Mission Plaza, just a few miles from here.

  Before I can move, I sense movement above me and look up. I’ve knocked loose the heavy mirror above me. It’s precariously skewed, hanging by a foot of metal wire extending up from its lowered left side. Much of its glass is broken—shattered in places. Tiny shards fall onto the couch around me.

  Cordero sprints down the last steps of the stairs with thundering strides. He turns his attention to me, stunned.

  We’re equally far from the front door.

  I plant my hands on the top of the back of the couch, ready to spring.

  In a sudden burst, the sound of an explosion fills my ears.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Screams and the noises of detonation swallow the blare of Elena’s house alarm.

  Covering my head, I drop. I roll against couch cushions. I can’t feel the heat. Did Carrie?

  “… a bomb has exploded at Mission Plaza—” a female reporter’s voice says.

  I slowly let go of my clutched knees. The noise of explosion disappears.

  “—not one hundred feet from Senator Lethco. We’re here live. Again, that’s an explosion at Mission Plaza. We now have—yes, here’s another look at the initial blast.”

  I uncover my head to stare at an undisturbed desk across the room from me. There’s no damage, no fire. My adrenaline makes it impossible to believe—the explosion is miles from me, not in Elena’s house at all but featured on the TV screen where Senator Lethco’s face appears.

  “… in support of the Farm Workers Union.” She’s giving a speech at a podium in the middle of a parking lot. “We now—

  With a gasp, Senator Lethco ducks. The camera swerves left and pans to the Taco Shack in the dark distance beyond.

  Screams sound as a microphone closer to the scene is turned on. A fireball shoots from the shattered glass of the shack’s windows. Figures block the screen as they flee. The noise of the blast ends as quickly as it came.

  I’m not the only one mesmerized by the televised explosion.

  Cordero is next to the couch, his sharp features illuminated by the TV’s shifting light.

  “—obvious questions,” the reporter continues. “Could this be an effort to intimidate peach strikers? Or is this another tragedy in the battle for control of drug trafficking in Verona, where Mission Plaza stands as a gateway for Primero and Último gangs?”

  Loud, popping sounds twang above me. Cordero stays focused on the screen, but I look up. The ten-foot long damaged mirror has broken free. It’s falling like a pointed dagger from the balcony, directly at Cordero standing next to the couch. It’s big. The right edge of it could hit the cushions I’m still on.

  “Corde—!” I scream before I can think, diving off the couch.

  My shoulder slams into the coffee table. The mirror crashes into the back of the couch with the crack of a thousand fissures. Shards rain like sand in a desert storm. Shrieking, I scramble over the varnished wood, covering my head with my arms.

  The frame of the mirror teeters against the couch. One side slides to the floor while the other rises from the cushioned armrest, like it’s reenacting the final scene of the sinking Titanic.

  Finally, glass stops breaking, leaving only the house alarm and the reporter’s voice.

  I drop my arms from my face and see Cordero’s dark form on the worn wooden floor.

  He’s sprawled on his back with his forehead touching the base of a wooden hutch. He’s covered in glass and not moving. There’s an angry bump above his left temple—from the hutch. He must have collided with it when he jumped back to avoid the glass.

  His hand twitches against the backpack half concealed under his hips—the backpack with the evidence he took.

  I stand. Debris rains from me. He could be hurt. He could need medical attention. Ten seconds with that backpack and I’ll call every ambulance in the county for him.

  I take a step, and he rolls to his side in a crunch of glass. He spits on the floor, rising onto his knees. I dart forward and jerk the backpack from under him. The newspaper article in my back pocket comes free and falls to the wooden floor. Carrie’s fearful face stares up at us. He turns to look at me with eyes that are coherent, determined. The backpack strap jerks me back, burning my palm. Cordero leaps to his feet. He’s got the backpack.

  I give up. I’ll never get the backpack by force.

  “Tell me,” I plead, still clutching a strap. I point with my free hand to the newspaper on the floor. “She was everything to me.”

  “That’s Carrie?” He glances at the photo. The police are on their way, presumably. He doesn’t have much time.

  I can’t look at him anymore. “Just tell me why someone would kill her.” I hate the desperation in my voice and the tremble of coming sobs.

  “That is the man who threatened her,” he says slowly, nodding at the mayor shaking Carrie’s hand.

  My gaze flies from the newspaper to the firm line of his lips. “Did he kill her?”

  “I don’t know who killed her.” Cordero’s eyes have no hint of aggression in them, just dark solemnity. He’s telling me something real.

  There’s a jingle from outside the front entrance. The door springs forward, stopped by the chain lock Cordero set. The rounded blades of a pair of wire cutters twist through the door’s small opening.

  “Drop your weapons or I’ll shoot to kill!” the former owner of the house, Rick Thornton, yells. He must have gotten a call from the alarm company along with Elena when I pulled the panic button.

  Fear laces every curve of Cordero’s features. He runs for the back hall.

  “Why’d he threaten Carrie?
When?” I grab the newspaper and scramble after him.

  The wire cutters click against the chain lock.

  “You have to go to the police,” I shout.

  “And if the police work for the mayor?” Cordero yells back.

  He veers right, going toward a bathroom with a window too small for anyone to fit through. I noticed when I searched the house earlier. The hallway is black, like the whole world is going dark at the mention of dirty cops.

  I hesitate. If Cordero’s arrested, could he actually be in danger from dishonest cops? And even if Verona officers are all moral superstars, would he go to the grave before he’d tell them anything about Carrie?

  I sprint the opposite direction down the hall. “This way.”

  There’s no time to see if Cordero is listening. I run into Elena’s room just as I hear the front door burst open. Rick yells incoherently as he enters. It sounds like he’s going upstairs. I bounce onto the bed and open the window. Cordero’s shoulder brushes mine.

  I look at him. “You trusted me.”

  He answers my gaze as we kneel next to each other on the bed. The pause lasts forever. He seems troubled or guilty or some other emotion I don’t recognize—a feeling he both likes and doesn’t like. Something he hasn’t given himself permission to feel.

  Breaking our eye contact, he opens his backpack and produces three keys on a ring. The top of one is rusted and dark. I realize I’m looking at blood. I realize he’s showing me the evidence he took and I’m looking at blood.

  “Juan’s keys,” Cordero says, tapping one of them. “It’s to a Honda. It’s not a smart key. So, old. The media says Juan owned a 1996 Honda Accord.

  “And that’s Juan’s blood?” I ask.

  “And me and Carrie’s fingerprints.”

  “No,” I breathe.

  His brown eyes are intense as he leans into me, making sure I’m coherent. “I trust you. Do you understand? You trust me. Be careful around your father.”

  With that, he grabs the top of the windowsill and swings his feet so they burst through the screen. Landing, he runs into the orchard, taking the keys and all that he knows with him.