Page 56 of Saint of the Shadows

The woman handed it over. Marisol pored over the paper. According to the article, retaliatory gang violence reigned. Somebody attacked a restaurant that was an alleged front for the Bratva AKA the Russian Mafia, killing eight people. Police determined the Mob did it after a similar attack on them the previous night. If the story of her attack wasn’t the actual story, something more sinister and unexplainable happened. Bodies torn apart? That wasn’t the modus operandi among Shadowhaven’s gangs. Lately, they got along. Before then? It would’ve been a sloppy shootout.

Below the fold, however, reported a different chaos. In fewer than a hundred words on page two, the news covered the still-missing virus stolen from the World Health Organization’s site in Manila. Damn. Buried among the news snippets of page four, Israel Ramirez, aka Izzy, alleged kingpin, missed his court date. Shadowhaven’s police were searching for him after finding a smashed, bloody vehicle on the city’s outskirts that was registered to a known associate. Double damn.

At least his news made the main section. Annie made the back page of the local section: Gang Violence Linked to Varian Lab Attack. Marisol wanted to light the paper on fire right then and there. It didn’t mention either of their names. They were unnamed victims, victims with a single familial connection to the Shadows. Dead Goon, Yevgeny Smirnov, and imprisoned Goon, Jonathan O’Banion, were members of the Mob. The gangs had followed their old rules with the Mob attacking Shadows and vice versa, and the world continued to spin. Violence toward people like Marisol and Annie happened because of the neighborhoods they were from. They only should’ve chosen a different place to be born. No conspiracy. No Bloodsucker. Nothing. It was an open-and-shut case. She couldn’t believe Tobias would peddle such horseshit, but then again, she barely knew him. And what she knew about him wasn’t him at all.

She handed the newspaper back. “Thanks.” She rang the bell and hopped off the bus. As she neared her parents’ house, she saw someone she didn’t recognize moving around the front steps.

Had the Bloodsucker found her already? She flipped up her hood and kept her gaze low, fidgeting with the commlink button tucked inside the wrist of her sweatshirt. Triple damn. She lasted all but a few hours before needing Vincent. Maybe she could bolt inside to get the baseball bat Dad kept next to the nightstand instead. She lowered her weight, ready to sprint.

The man was freakishly tall. He bent over and drilled a plank of wood into another one. A construction worker. Phew. She rolled her shoulders back. He was good-looking, too, with the tailored fit of his long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans emphasizing his thickly muscled thighs and massive shoulders. Not Vincent, but still worth appreciating, like a work of art or a sunset. The title of this work? A heavyweight with cropped salt-and-pepper hair.

And...ohshitohshitohshit... she just ogled Detective Tobias Quinlan. Watching him work from the sidewalk, she felt something akin to leaving the oven on.

Except the thing she forgot to turn off was a person.

And damn if those voicemails from that night didn’t come back to haunt her.

Of course, she greeted the person who scraped her near-dead body off the pit of an elevator shaft with, “What are you doing here?”

The oh-shit feeling wasn’t going anywhere soon. At least, not with the way his speckled eyes glowered. “Marisol Novotny. What in hell’s ass are you doing here?”

She ground down a dried-out weed poking through the crack of the sidewalk. “I figured the city’s safe now that I barely make the paper.” She glimpsed back up at Tobias. Vincent looked diminutive in comparison, relying on a costume and mind games to make him the Patron Saint.Tobias was already an intimidating height and mass, but that just made him Tobias.

Someone needed to smack her and tell her not every white guy with a chiseled jawline looked the same. Tobias’s skin tanned from being out in the sun, and the grizzled start of a graying beard hid the telltale jawline. To compare Vincent and Tobias was to compare the Apple of Eden and a decent orange at the supermarket.

Marisol asked, “What are you doing here?”

“I told you I’d look after them.”

Quadruple damn.

The door behind them opened a crack. “Tobias, I have fresh tortillas when you’re ready for a break.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Novotny.” He spouted the phrase with such ease, he must’ve said it a thousand times in the days she disappeared from the city.

The door swung wide open. “Ay Dios Mio, Maria Soledad.”

Mom burst from the door, unhindered by the drop to the ground from the missing stairs. She embraced Marisol on the sidewalk. Shorter and stouter than Marisol, she reached up to hold Marisol’s face steady with her dry and cracked hands. Marisol scrunched up her face in exaggerated resistance, pretending to hate every kiss Mom planted on her cheek. Mom’s tired eyes widened. “Oh, my Maria Soledad. Your father is inside.”

Mom yanked Marisol into the house and straight to the kitchen. “Pete! Maria Soledad!”

Dad ran into the kitchen. Without words, he hugged Marisol, suffocating her against his barrel chest with his burly arms.

Released from the safety of Dad’s hug, Mom’s onslaught began. “Where were you? Why no calls?”

Marisol breathed deeply to prepare for her rehearsed apology.

Tobias entered the kitchen. “She can’t compromise her safe house location.” Win for him, saving Marisol from the wrath of Mom.

“I’m fine. I worried about you guys, but I guess I didn’t need to.” Marisol eyed Tobias, who smirked as he lowered himself into a chair.

They gathered as a rag-tag family around the table where Mom had buffed the veneer raw in patches. Marisol picked at a tortilla smeared with butter while Mom piled more on the serving dish, and Dad and Tobias discussed the Rooks’ starting players.

Life was working out for them. She didn’t need to pull her family from disaster to disaster. For once, she could let them be. Her new problem would be getting Tobias to stop looking at her like she was the buttered tortilla.

After breakfast, she washed the dishes and watched from the kitchen window as Tobias and Dad drilled the last of the stair planks in place. How would Dad get along with Vincent? Vincent wouldhire someone to fix the stairs, and he and Dad would discuss a famous boxing match in such minute detail that Dad would be confused because it occurred before Vincent’s fake birthdate. Better yet, Vincent would superpower his way to building stairs, cooking breakfast, and cleaning dishes so both parents would stare dreamily at him. Or not. They would probably stand in awkward silence before Dad asked Vincent about his money, deduced the rich bitch had a hand in busting the stevedore union, and finally chase him off shouting, “No daughter of mine dates a scab!” You tell ‘em, imaginary Dad.

Despite that strange vision, reality proved even more surreal. Mom was sitting at the kitchen table, her legs extended over Nicole’s chair.

---