Did he have to write her name in blood orsomething?
Oh, fuck. Fuck.Fuck.
He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, sagged against the concrete support of the highway underpass, the painunbearable.
“You okay,buddy?”
He opened his eyes, found a drunk shuffling toward him, bottle in hand. He fumbled in his pocket for an Oxy, chewed it. “Fuckoff.”
When that didn’t work, he drew his pistol, waved it in the drunk’sface.
“Well, that’s bad manners.” The drunk shuffled away. “Asshole.”
He bit back a cry. The drugs never kicked in fast enough. It wasn’t going to end until he killed himself. God, he’d do it now, but this bullet was meant for someone else. And then there wasMia.
Then it came tohim.
The newsphotographer.
That’s who he was. The bastard driving that truck had taken the photo of Mia that had run on the front of theDenver Independent. His name was probably there below the photo. Even if it weren’t, he wouldn’t be hard tofind.
Just follow him home fromwork.
That’s what he’d done with Garcia. Poor, stupidGarcia.
Mia could try to hide, but he would findher.
8
Mia stepped out of the elevator and followed Joaquin down the hallway. He must earn decent money to have a condo in the River North Art District. RiNo was Denver’s trendiest neighborhood, full of galleries, brew pubs, clubs, boutiques, and restaurants. He stopped outside number 407, unlocked the deadbolt, and stepped aside to let her enter, flicking on the lights before locking the door behindthem.
“Wow.” Some of her anxiety melted away. “I guess it pays to be a newspaperphotographer.”
This made Joaquin laugh. He took her parka and hung it with his in a closet. “Make yourself athome.”
She found herself standing in a small foyer and looking into an ultra-modern kitchen with stainless steel appliances and European-style cabinetry. A row of pendant lights hung above a kitchen island, a glass bowl filled with apples and bananas sitting on the granite countertop. “Niceplace.”
Beyond the kitchen was a small dining area with a table of reclaimed wooden planks, a bench with a multi-colored cushion on one side, chairs of molded plastic in bright turquoise on the other. The table itself was all but buried beneath mail and newspapers, a laundry basket with folded clothes sitting on oneend.
The living room had a blocky sectional sofa in soft gray and a rustic wooden coffee table that was covered with books and newspapers. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out on a deck that faced west—toward the mountains. It was too dark to see the mountains now, but city lights glitteredbelow.
“Sorry. The place is a mess.” Joaquin gathered up the mail, shoved it into the laundry basket, and disappeared down a small sidehallway.
“I think it’s beautiful.” Her gaze traveled over the photographs on the walls—a field ofAquilegia caerulea—Colorado blue columbines—a bald eagle standing on a frozen lake, a jagged mountain peak against a blue sky, ocean waves unraveling on a sandy beach. “These areyours?”
He called to her from another room. “On my days off, I try to get out to shoot. Let me show you the spareroom.”
She followed him down the sidehallway.
“I’ve got my own bathroom, so this one’s yours.” He pointed to a small bathroom with a tub and shower stall at the end of the hallway. “My room is to the right here, and the spare room is there to your left. Let me know if you needanything.”
“Thanks.” Mia walked into the bedroom, flicked on the lights, and found herself surrounded once more bycolor.
The bed had an antique iron frame, its green paint chipped to reveal the metal beneath. A hand-pieced quilt of fabric in every color Mia could imagine—rich blues, hot pinks, vibrant reds and purples, greens, oranges, yellows—covered the bed. Photographs adorned the walls. Two older black men playing chess in a park. A rusted car frame in the middle of a lush forest, its interior filled with ferns. Sunrise through a sandstone arch somewhere in thedesert.
Joaquin came up to the door behind her. “Youhungry?”
“No, thanks.” Stress always killed her appetite. “You’re incrediblytalented.”