Ellery’s image that I downloaded the night before. I tapped Kayden’s shoulder and handed him the phone.

He shoved it under Carlos’s bloodless face. “One of them look like this?”

A jerky nod of confirmation. “The scary mofo.”

Great, we had a definitive link between Tito and Ellery. Although I wasn’t sure what good it would do now. If that wasn’t enough, we had additional, unknown players poking around in this mess.

Without taking his attention from Carlos, Kayden handed back my phone.

“When did the scary one stop by?”

“A couple of days after he split.”

Something heavy hit the front door behind me, rattling it in its frame. “Yo, Carlos, que pasa?”

I stepped to the side and adjusted my stance. “Tell him you’re fine,” I hissed.

Explaining a gunfight in downtown Phoenix with some lowlife drug dealer

would not go over well with Delacourt.

“Nada mucho, así estoy bien.” Carlos’s voice emerged somewhat steady with

a hint of impatience.

We all stared at the closed door. On the other side, a muted conversation in

Spanish ensued, before heavy footsteps moved away. I shared a look with

Kayden. We needed to get the hell out of here before our luck ran out.

“What did the scary mother fucker want?” Kayden’s low question snapped

Carlos’s attention back around.

“Same as you, where Tito was.”

“What did you tell him?” he pressed.

“Same thing I told the other dude and now you, nothing, man, swear. He

didn’t leave a forwarding, didn’t say shit to me about nothin’.” Carlos’ hands

curled into white-knuckle fists in his lap, and a little bit of spine emerged. “What the hell is going on, man? Why’s everyone after him?”

I ignored his question in favor of one of my own. “Where would he go if he

had to hide?”

He started to shake his head, but Kayden cut him off. “Think! If things were

going to go south, where would he go? Family? Friends? Someone he’d run to

for help, maybe?”

Carlos’s narrow face scrunched up as he tried to get his remaining brain cells

to function. “There was this dude he served with, he mentioned him a couple of

times.”

“Name?”

He quailed before Kayden. “Boomer, Bomber, something like that, I’m not

sure.” Something clicked in the reefer-induced haze, and he said, “San Diego.

He lived in San Diego.”

Son of a…I choked back the words. A six-hour road trip to hunt down someone named Boomer or Bomber? Yeah, sounded like a wonderful trip.

Kayden straightened and stepped back.

Carlos took advantage of his reprieve and dragged in a noisy breath. When Kayden turned away and walked toward me, Carlos blurted, “You’re not goin’

hurt me, are ya?”

Neither one of us bothered to answer. I caught the familiar hand signal from

Kayden and switched places with him. Gun drawn, he stepped behind the door

as I headed back to retrieve the notebooks in the bedroom.

When I returned, Carlos was watching us carefully. “You ain’t stealing the weed, tell me you ain’t taking that shit. He’ll kill me if that shit goes missing.”

Giving the kid my coldest look, I warned, “You might want to consider

house sitting for someone else for a while, Carlos.”

His head bobbed up and down nervously.

Stepping to the other side of the door, I covered Kayden as he cautiously pulled open the door. I scanned for a possible welcoming committee but found the sunlit ragged yard empty. I motioned to Kayden, and he slipped out,

sunglasses in place.

I left mine on my head as the few seconds to slide them down could be costly. Instead, I narrowed my eyes against the glare and followed. Behind us, Carlos wasted no time slamming the door shut.

As we made our way back to the car, my spine crawled. Only when Kayden