My Soul to Take (43 page)

Fana raced past a corner she couldn’t see, a piece of him tucked away in secrecy, but she didn’t linger. She would have time to learn him. He probed at the spaces she’d held from him, too, but he respected her barriers when he found them. The barriers tripped up their speed, but why reveal weaknesses?

One part of them was not free to play; one part of them always had to remember.

Still, they dived into each other, hurtling through each other’s memories, tasting every thought they could find. They were hungry for each other, so they gorged.

Their bodies, somewhere far from them, found each other, too.

Neither Fana nor Michel heard the tolling bells that woke the mountainside.

Texas

Wednesday

T
he man who opened the door to room 306 of the Motel 6 off Interstate 45 southeast of Houston looked like he was sixty or sixty-five, easy; like somebody’s grandfather who complained about bad eyes and sore joints. His records said he was fifty-six, but life had ridden him hard. He had hollowed bags under his eyes, and his breathing gurgled slightly in his chest, probably from smoking.

But a shot of Glow would get him into shape. He had to be ready tomorrow.

Enriquez had said he was the best.

The stranger recognized Johnny from the vidphone, so he let him in, closing the door efficiently. The room was dim, barely lighted by a weak fluorescent bulb near the bathroom and a weaker lamp between the two twin beds. The curtains were as thick as blankets, blocking even the Texas sun. No suitcase was in sight. The sniper hadn’t turned on the TV. The walls carried the smell of deep-fried dough from white food wrappers in tight balls in the trash.

“I hate Houston,” the sniper said. “I should’ve said Fort Worth. Better food.”

The notion of food, stopping to eat, was beyond Johnny. Houston was more than a thousand miles from Nogales, but it might be too close. That was all Johnny was thinking.

“Just kidding.” The sniper outstretched his hand, and arm muscles flexed. “I’m Raul.”

Johnny shook Raul’s hand. “John Jamal Wright.” He used his name from the news.

The cross hanging from Raul’s neck reassured him; a small, sterling silver testament to faith, not fashion. He wore a plain wedding band, tightened by time on his ring finger.
He knows both God and love
, Johnny thought. Raul’s features might be Maya: dark brown skin and a broad forehead. His snow-white hair was tied into a long ponytail.

When Enriquez had mentioned his hitter’s military experience, Johnny had assumed he was recommending someone who’d retired from the Mexican military. Wrong.

Raul Puerta was a retired U.S. Marines sniper. He and Raul would be their own army.

“An honor, Wright,” Raul said. His eyes were full of things he wanted to say. “The war on Glow is a sin. A medic brought some out in the field—it’s liquid gold. I’ve never seen anything like it. And, man, I heard ops we’re doing that turned my hair gray—civilians getting snatched, misinformation, cover-ups. That singer … what’s-her-name. The loonies are running the asylum. You guys are heroes doing God’s work. Get it to the damn people.”

Hiring a sniper didn’t feel like God’s work, but Johnny thanked him.

“Let’s nail this crazy son of a bitch,” Raul whispered.

Raul turned on his cheap bedside clock radio to hide their voices from neighbors. A woman was singing a Spanish ballad so loudly that the tinny speakers rattled. Johnny almost asked Raul to turn off the music right away. He rarely ignored his hunches. Anything could be hiding an omen or a message, but Johnny let the radio play.

Johnny sat on the bed opposite Raul’s. “Here’s what we know …” he began.

His intelligence said that the wedding would be on Thursday morning, a window anywhere between five a.m. and noon. Raul should be in place by five a.m. at the latest, since an earlier public event seemed unlikely. In past public appearances, followers had two hours’ notice if they wanted to see him in person. News of his
appearances sent Nogales into a frenzy. Raul would be alerted as soon as a time was announced.

Johnny talked about their target as
he
, and Raul followed his lead: Where would he be standing? How long would he be exposed?

Johnny had to admit how little he knew, offering satellite images of the surrounding area that weren’t enough. Michel’s unholy home always looked blurry in photos, hidden in shadows. Johnny was guessing even about the wedding’s location; he was convinced that it would be in the tower because of a stubborn memory from the time when Michel had tormented him with visions of his future with Fana. He had seen a domed tower.

The singer on the radio captured the agony of wondering what Fana was doing at that moment. Johnny tried not to think about Michel’s face, to forget his name. The plan to kill him felt like a wish. Even with a good sniper, what were their chances?

“You’ve left me a lot of question marks, kid,” Raul said.

“Then we need luck,” Johnny said. “Maybe more than luck.”

Raul shrugged. “Here’s our luck,” he said, and opened his duffel bag.

The gun was in pieces. As a collection of thin parts painted in camo green, the gadget didn’t look like luck, or even a good omen. It looked scratched up and secondhand. It wasn’t any more impressive than Enriquez or Raul. Or Johnny.

Raul sat on the floor like a child at playtime and began assembling it between the beds, where it would be hidden from the door. Twisting, snapping, patting, metal clicking against metal. It took him only a few breaths, about thirty seconds. Assembled, the gun was four feet long. Its oversized scope looked like it could see footprints on the moon.

“This is the Intervention,” Raul said. “No bull—that’s the name. Handheld ballistic computer. Laser range finder. This is the reason the U.S. Marine Corps has the best snipers in the world.” The room brightened in the gun’s aura.

Johnny ran his fingers across the gun’s tiny scratches; its past life. A former marine was almost as good as an active unit, Johnny realized. They might as well have the cavalry.

“What’s the range?” Johnny said.

“How far you need?”

“To be safe … half a mile?” It sounded feeble. Michel would hear Raul breathing. Their reports on Michel said he had military patrols within half a mile of the church for crowd control. “But farther’s always better.”

“I can give you a mile, if I can get past any obstructions,” Raul said.

A mile! Raul grinned at Johnny’s surprise, his teeth so tobacco stained they were brown. “In ’04, my guys shot a barrel three times from 1.3 miles with this baby. World record.”

“Don’t count on a world record,” Johnny said, nervous. Raul’s psych report had looked fine after twenty-one years in the corps, but maybe he was delusional. Maybe they all were.

“Course not,” Raul said. “I just need a mile.”

One mile’s cushion. A mile’s protection. Johnny didn’t know if he should feel assured by the adjustment, but he did. Raul knew his capacities from practice. Johnny wondered how many men he had killed, or if Enriquez had hired him before. He was disappointed in himself when he realized that he wouldn’t ask.

“What else do you need?” Johnny said.

“I have a few guys, but I only need my spotter. We figger all we’ll get is the cold shot.”

“What’s that?”

“The first one,” Raul said. “Might take the bullet three seconds to get home, but it’ll travel faster than the sound. He’ll never hear it coming.”

Having the plan mapped out with the familiar assurance of physics made Johnny’s heart celebrate. He envied the spotter who would go to the mountain with Raul and the Intervention. He wanted to hear the
crack
of the gunfire with his own ears.

Someone knocked on the door, two polite raps. Raul caught Johnny’s eyes, wondering.

“That must be the Glow,” Johnny said.

Johnny could have brought Raul’s sample himself, but protocol said always to hire a courier. Raul covered the Intervention with one
of the brown bedspreads before he got up to answer the door, not rushing an ounce. He moved in a calculated, economical way. He wasn’t the kind of man who tripped or made missteps. His finger would be steady on the trigger.

Raul signed for the package, a standard padded envelope.

Once the door was closed, Raul raised the package to Johnny:
May I?
Johnny nodded.

The hypodermic was inside, already filled with a dose of Glow. More like fifty doses, but it was hard to dilute Glow enough for a single dose. Most people used more than they needed. The solution was barely pink, more saline than blood. Raul held it up to the lamp’s anemic light, shaking it.

“You can’t tell by looking,” Johnny said.

“True that,” Raul said.

A slight wheeze from Raul’s lungs gave away his eagerness as he breathed faster. Raul pulled a black rubber strap out of his back pocket. With the hypodermic between his teeth, Raul deftly snapped the strap around his upper arm. He flicked at his skin to pop a vein.

“Been a while since my last dose,” Raul said, poising the needle. “When it’s the real stuff, man … There’s this feeling you get right when it hits your bloodstream …”

When Raul plunged the hypo, Johnny looked away. He had seen shots administered at clinics, but no one had ever shot up in front of him. Raul was a joyrider. If Raul knew that the Glow was from Johnny’s blood, he would never let Johnny leave the room. Johnny would become his personal bank account and fountain of youth; his morning cup of coffee and his nightly whiskey shot. Johnny shivered. Eventually, people would notice that he didn’t age. If he lived long enough.

“There it is,” Raul said, his eyes closed. He exhaled hard through his nostrils, in bliss.

“Makes you feel like you can do anything,” Johnny said. He thought about the mountain, the
crack
of the gunshot that might echo for miles.

Raul nodded. “La Reina,” he said absently.

“What?”

Raul nodded toward the radio. “Celia Cruz—La Reina. My mother loved her.”

The radio came into crisp focus. The song sounded sad to Johnny despite the dance tempo, as if the singer had Fana’s voice. Johnny remembered what
La Reina
meant from high school Spanish: The Queen.

“If the bride gets shot, no more Glow,” Johnny said. “Scrap the mission if she’s at risk.”

No one could claim that they had misunderstood. Johnny wouldn’t have known about the wedding if Mahmoud hadn’t told him; and Jessica has sent him to Mahmoud. Johnny had promised Jessica not to hurt Fana. And if Fana was hurt, Michel might have a chance to destroy what mattered about her. Whatever Michel had done to Fana might be undone after he was shot.

Raul raised his eyebrows. “Scrap it?” he repeated thoughtfully, head cocked to the side, as if he were already seeing Michel in his laser-guided sight, another everyday target.

“If she survives, maybe we all will,” Johnny said. “Only shoot
him
.”

“If you say so,” Raul said. He didn’t sound convinced.

“Sorry to be a jerk, but I need your word,” Johnny said. “Swear it on your wife.”

Raul’s eyes narrowed to slits. He didn’t want his wife brought into the room. He looked like he wanted to remind Johnny about the bigger stakes, like the outbreak in Puerto Rico. But he nodded, resigned. “You have my word. I swear it on Martha.” He said her name like a prayer.

Johnny shook his hand, clasping tightly. They didn’t let go right away. Raul’s word might mean something, or it might not. Plans went wrong.

“I like the way you walk, kid,” Raul said. “Straight and sharp. Hope your dad’s proud.”

“My parents are too scared to be proud.” The letter he’d sent his parents would only scare them more, but they deserved a warning. Johnny didn’t dare dwell on his parents. “But maybe one day.”

Johnny shut off the radio, not sure why. He didn’t ignore any signals, anything that felt too right or too wrong. Something about
the music bothered him, even if it was beautiful. The music might bring him closer to Fana somehow. To Michel.

With the radio off, Johnny listened in the silence, waiting for a hint that he’d been found. The silence was worse than the sad song.

Johnny wished he had an appetite, or that Raul didn’t mind the food in Houston.

He would have liked a last good meal before the wedding.

V
iolet waters lapped against a pink and lilac sky, blending at the distant horizon.

Fana was drifting in her ocean of colors, wrapped in a warm blanket of water. Part floating, part flying, massaged by the ocean’s fingers. Serenity. Spanish singing flew past her ear, and a stray thought—
Johnny?
—before both were gone. The wind carried violin strains to help her remember her way back, but she didn’t follow the music. Not yet.

Fana had never traveled so far, even when she was three. Fana dived beneath the water, knifing through the rainbow of glowing shapes and tendrils, water massaging her lungs.

She saw a shape approaching from the murkiness below, the deeper waters.

Hair, shoulders, his face. His image appeared as a strobe: here and gone. A hint of his mental marker. Fana flipped, speeding back toward the surface. She swam faster, and he gained on her. He grabbed her foot and tugged, forcing her to stop swimming.

In Michel’s first grip, Fana hadn’t been able to remember her own name. His presence had been poised above her like a giant, ready to reduce her to a wisp of smoke. The scope of him had taught her how strong she could expect to be, if she learned.

Then Michel let her go. Again.

Michel popped above the water, damp hair hugging his forehead and neck. He was smiling, although his face flickered in and out of sight. In the mental landscape, physical appearance was an afterthought. Her mind flashed Michel’s image because she perceived his
mental marker, but they didn’t need eyes to see here. She could feel his smile.

“There!” Michel said. “Found you again.”

“I was barely hiding that time,” Fana said. “It’s taking you longer.”

Playing with him taught her fastest. Fana had found Michel when he was hiding once, but she couldn’t hold him through pure strength, yet; she darted and dashed in his thoughts, confusing him. He lost himself when he chased her, the hunter in him fully engaged. Challenging Michel was the best way to hold him.