Protector (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 5) (20 page)

“Uh…sure.” Following her instructions, Alex maneuvered through the residential area and then came to a stop a few feet from the corner she’d indicated. As she was lifting the handle to let herself out, he added, “We really do appreciate your help.”

“No problem.” She got out of the Pathfinder, and for a second, her pretty face twisted into a mask of hate. “I hope you catch that motherfucker.”

And she slammed the door shut and strode off in the direction of her parents’ house.

For a second, Alex and Caitlin just stared at one another. Then she said, “You heard Lucinda. Let’s catch that motherfucker.”

A
lex set
up the route on his iPhone, and he and Caitlin headed out immediately. The drive to Temecula would take around an hour and a half, depending on traffic, but since it was the middle of the day, he had to hope that wouldn’t be too much of a factor. In the seat next to him, Caitlin was keyed up, tense. He couldn’t blame her — this information about Matías’ sister could be the break they’d so desperately needed.

Or she could shut them down just as heinously as Simón Santiago had. Alex supposed it depended on how close she was to her brother, how much familial loyalty she possessed. Once upon a time, he might have said that no one would cover up for a family member who’d done such terrible things, but after he’d heard about some of the things Damon Wilcox had pulled, Alex wasn’t so sure about that particular point of faith in human nature anymore.

“You okay over there?” he asked Caitlin, and she startled before sending him a tentative smile.

“I think so.” Her head tilted to one side, and she continued, “That is, there are some things I’m
very
okay about. But I’m worried Matías’ sister is going to tell us to drop dead when we ask for her help.”

That reply made him smile a little. This thing wasn’t resolved by a long shot, but at least Caitlin was telling him that relations between the two of them were just fine, even if nothing else was. “She might,” he admitted. “That worries me, too, but we’ll just have to see what happens.”

Caitlin nodded and settled herself back in her seat, then glanced out the window. At what, he wasn’t sure; the area the 10 Freeway cut through at this point in their travels was mostly industrial, and, coupled with the lowering gray sky, anything but inviting.

They drove on, eventually angling south on I-15. He’d propped up his iPhone on the dash so he could watch the miles counting down. About a half hour to go. They’d be pulling into Temecula at the tail end of lunch, but since he and Caitlin had eaten breakfast late, he wasn’t going to suggest that they stop for some food. Better to head straight to Olivia’s house and hope for the best. With any luck, Matías would have completely alienated her, too, and she’d be more than willing to give him and Caitlin any information she had.

Wishful thinking, probably. But he was sort of tired of contemplating worst-case scenarios.

Eventually, they pulled off the freeway in Temecula and wound through neighborhood after neighborhood of tract houses. Since he lived in roughly the same sort of area in Tucson, albeit one where the lot sizes were a bit bigger, he didn’t think twice about his surroundings. Caitlin, though, was staring at the streets with wide blue-green eyes, as if her brain couldn’t quite absorb the notion of mile after mile of nearly identical houses.

The tract where Olivia’s house was located looked a little older, the houses a little smaller. A lot of the cars were parked on the street or in driveways, rather than being tucked into a garage. Alex saw toys lying out on lawns or sitting on sidewalks, but no kids. They were probably inside eating lunch or, if they were older, still at school.

By contrast, Olivia’s home looked very neat and clean from the outside. No scattered Big Wheels or buckets of sidewalk chalk. The grass on the postage-stamp lawn was green and bright, and cheerful pansies grew in the flower border next to the front walk.

Seeing all this, Caitlin brightened a bit. “It looks nice.”

“It does,” Alex agreed, then pulled into the first opening on the street, two houses down from Olivia’s place. “Let’s hope she’s just as nice.”

Caitlin’s face fell a little at that remark, but she only nodded and slung her purse strap over her shoulder before letting herself out of the SUV. He followed suit and met her on the sidewalk, and together they went up the walkway.

The front door had a bright flowery wreath hanging on it that partially obscured the peephole. Not that it really mattered; even a
nunca
such as Olivia would be able to tell from the other side of the door that the two people standing on the floral “Welcome” mat were witch-kind.

Since he was closest, he reached over and pushed the doorbell. A simple
ding-dong
sounded, none of that pretentious Westminster chimes crap. They didn’t have to wait nearly as long this time for a response, either; a bare minute later, a young woman a couple of years older than Caitlin stood there, staring at them in some perplexity. She had a baby, maybe six months, balanced on one hip, and she was pretty in a rounded sort of way, probably still working to get rid of the weight gain from pregnancy.

“Yes?” she asked. Not “what is it?” Clearly she knew it had to be some kind of witch business for the two of them to be there.

“Hi,” Alex said. “I’m Alex Trujillo, and this is Caitlin McAllister. We need to talk to you about your brother.” On the way up the front walk, he’d resolved to get to the heart of the matter immediately. If she was going to shut them down, she might as well do it right away rather than waste any of their time…or hers.

But she didn’t shut them down. She swallowed, sent a nervous glance up the street, and then said, “Come in.”

He allowed himself the barest sigh of relief as Caitlin entered the house, and he followed closely behind her. The first hurdle cleared, anyway.

The rooms in the house were small, but, like the front yard, everything was neat and clean — not an easy trick with a six-month-old baby. He knew some of his own cousins had let their own places go to wrack and ruin the second a child came along. Olivia led them to the family room, then set the baby down in the playpen there. When she straightened up, there was a look of mingled fear and worry on her face.

“What has Matías done?” she asked.

Alex and Caitlin exchanged a glance. It seemed obvious the young woman was ready enough to believe her brother’s guilt, so clearly she knew he was no angel. Since this was Caitlin’s story to tell, not his, he gave her an encouraging nod.

She still hesitated for a second, then said, “I know this is going to sound terrible. But it’s what really happened to me…and is still happening to my two friends.” From there she launched into a terse retelling of how Matías and his two friends had lured her and Roslyn and Danica from the restaurant bar, and what had happened afterward.

During this entire narrative, Olivia’s face had grown paler and paler. Alex had never seen Matías in person, so he didn’t know if they shared any of the same features — whether the wide, slightly almond-shaped eyes were similar, or the straight, chiseled nose. But he knew their expressions could never have been similar, because there was nothing hard or cruel about the way she looked. By the time Caitlin was done, the other young woman had what appeared to be tears shining in her dark eyes.

“I am so sorry,” she said at last. “He wasn’t a bad brother to me when we were really small, but as he got older and his talents started to appear….” A shake of her head. “It was bad. And even worse when it became obvious I wasn’t intended to have any true magic at all, except for the smallest, most useless things. He’d bully me, make fun of me…and then after that, he ignored me as if I didn’t exist. I embarrassed him. He was meant for more, he told me. He was going to do great things.” Her mouth twisted. “Yeah, like get the clan leader’s daughter in the sack. Matías didn’t skate out of that one quite like he’d intended. He’d thought Simón would make Lucinda marry him. But instead Simón told Matías to get out of our territory, and even Matías wasn’t strong enough to take on the clan leader and the witches and warlocks in his inner circle, the ones who guard our
prima
against harm.”

“So where did he go?” Alex asked.

The baby started making the little meeping and mewling noises that were generally a precursor to a crying fit, and Olivia went over and picked him up, jouncing him on her hip so he’d quiet down. “He went to Phoenix first, but he didn’t like being that close to the de la Paz
prima
…he said he thought she could smell him or something. So he headed down to Tucson. He’s been there for a few months.”

“Do you have an address?” Caitlin’s voice was tense, worried. They’d been denied that urgent piece of information so many times.

“No,” Olivia replied, denying them once again.

Shit.

“But,” she went on, “he gave me an address for one of those mail drop places, just in case I needed to send him anything. I don’t know if it will help, but I can get that for you at least.”

It was better than nothing. Besides, all those mailbox businesses required you to give a proper address when you rented a box. Maybe Alex could get his cousin Miguel on it, see if he could pry the actual address out of someone at the mail drop place.

“That would be great,” he said. “It could help a lot.”

Olivia smiled, appearing relieved that she’d been able to help them a little, if not as much as they might have hoped for. Baby still on her hip, she went over to a side table that had a small drawer and pulled out an address book. She flipped through it with her left hand and got to the correct page, then came over to Alex.

“At the top of the page,” she instructed, holding the book open for him.

Sure enough, there was “Matías Escobar,” written in a neat, rounded hand, followed by a box number and a Tucson zip code. Alex pulled his phone out of his pocket and entered the information in his notepad app. “Thanks,” he said when he was done.

Caitlin was still standing a few paces off, a troubled expression on her face. “Yes, thank you for helping us, but….”

“But you’re wondering why I would help you at all?” Olivia went to the side table and replaced the address book in the drawer before turning back to face them. The baby began to fuss, so she lifted him from her hip and leaned him up against her shoulder. A soothing hand running up and down the child’s back, she said, “Matías is my brother, but I know he’s not a good person. And when he fell in with Jorge and Tomas, he just got that much worse. I’m not sure what their talents are, but I know they’re not as strong as my brother. But they do seem to…I don’t know…encourage him.”

“So they are brothers?” Caitlin asked, the strain clear in her voice. Alex guessed she was remembering that terrible vision of the two warlocks having sex with Roslyn.

“No. Cousins — first cousins. Not cousins in the way the witch clans tend to use the word, where we all say we’re cousins even though the connection may be four or five generations back.”

Both Alex and Caitlin had to smile at that remark. It was so true — “cousin” tended to be shorthand for most clan relationships. It was just easier that way.

“Anyway,” Olivia went on, “Matías is one of those people who’s never satisfied with what he has. He always needs something more. He hates that our mother was a refugee witch, that we were only here in Santiago territory on Simón’s sufferance. I wish I could tell you what he’s up to, but we haven’t spoken for a few months now. He doesn’t approve of me, and I don’t approve of him.”

She sounded sad rather than bitter when she said this, and Alex could tell that beneath it all, she still loved her brother, even if she couldn’t possibly defend his actions. Who knows…maybe she was hoping he would manage to redeem himself somehow.

The baby began to fuss again, and Alex had been around too many cousins with infants not to know what that meant. The kid was either hungry or needed to be changed. Whichever it was, he knew that was his and Caitlin’s cue to get out of there. Anyway, they’d gotten the one piece of information they could use. It was time to be on the road.

“I’m so sorry,” Caitlin said. Her eyes met Alex’s across the room, and he gave her a very faint nod, just so she’d know they needed to wrap this up. “And we won’t take up any more of your time.”

Olivia didn’t bother to protest. She was still caressing the baby, trying to keep him calm, but he was getting increasingly restless. Alex knew the screaming would commence at any second, and she had to want them out of there just as badly as they wanted to leave.

She only nodded and led them to the front door. Just as he was crossing the threshold, Caitlin already a pace or two ahead of him, Olivia said, “Alex, if you do find Matías — ”

He paused and glanced back. Her mouth was tight with worry, her eyes strained. He could tell what she was thinking. “I won’t do anything more than I have to,” he told her. “We just want Danica and Roslyn back. What their clans decide to do after that….” All he could do was lift his shoulders. Truthfully, he’d been so focused on tracking down Matías that Alex hadn’t much thought about what they’d do with the rogue warlock once they caught him. Well, that was an unwelcome chore he’d be more than happy to hand off to the elders of the McAllister and Wilcox clans.

“I understand,” Olivia said sadly, then shut the door.

It was clear she never expected to see her brother alive again.

C
aitlin remained
silent as Alex maneuvered them out of the housing tract where Olivia lived and back onto the freeway, heading south so they could pick up Interstate 8 and take the southern route back to Arizona. The last thing she’d ever expected to feel was pity for a member of Matías’ family, not after everything he’d done, but she couldn’t help being sorry for Olivia. How awful to know that your brother was capable of such terrible acts, and also know there was nothing you could do to stop the justice that was surely coming his way. It wasn’t as if Caitlin had ever been terribly close to her own brother, as they were two very different people with not much except their parents in common, but she did love him, was proud of his accomplishments. She couldn’t imagine not being able to feel that way about a sibling.

While she was looking out the window, at the freeways that never seemed to clear completely, and the mass of cars around them, Alex said, “I’m going to call Miguel and get the information on the mail drop to him. If we’re really lucky, maybe he’ll have a lead for us by the time we get back to Tucson.”

“Sounds good,” she replied, although she had to wonder whether the de la Paz contingent in Tucson would wait for her and Alex to return, if Miguel actually managed to dig up something that would help in locating Matías. She had a feeling they wouldn’t exactly stand on ceremony when it came to that sort of thing. After all, she and Alex had at least a six-hour drive ahead of them. She wasn’t quite sure exactly how long it would take, since they’d traveled a different route when heading to Pasadena, but she knew it was going to require a chunk of time to get back to home base.