Protector (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 5) Read online

  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.

  * * *

  Caitlin 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.

  He pressed a button on his contacts list, then lifted the phone to his ear. Caitlin hoped no one was paying too much attention; didn’t California have a hands-free law for mobile devices? But as she glanced out the car window, she saw one driver with her own phone glued to her ear, and another apparently putting on mascara, so she thought Alex was safe from scrutiny as long as a highway patrol officer didn’t come cruising by at exactly the wrong moment.

  From the long pause that ensued, Caitlin guessed Miguel wasn’t picking up, for whatever reason. And that speculation proved to be correct, because Alex said, “Hey, Miguel, I’m checking in. Caitlin and I got something you might be able to use. I need you to check on this box and see if there’s a real address attached to it.” For just a second, he pulled the phone away from his ear and went to his notepad, then read off the information for the rented mailbox. After that, he transferred the phone to his other ear and added, “Can you call me and let me know you got this? We’re on our way back to Tucson, but it’s probably going to be close to seven by the time we get there. Thanks.” He ended the call and set the phone down on the dashboard, presumably so he could reach it easily if and when Miguel got back to him.

  “No answer, huh?”

  A shake of the head. “No. He might be with a client and has the sound turned off on his phone. But I know he’ll get back to me when he can. I just have to hope that it’ll be before we get out into the open desert. God knows if I’ll get any cell reception out there.”

  That didn’t sound very good. She was about to ask if he’d ever driven this way before, then remembered this was his first trip to California, just as it had been hers. Not that they’d gotten to see very much of it. But although Simón Santiago had done his best to thwart their efforts, they’d still come away with one valuable piece of information. That was something.

  She yawned, feeling something of the anticlimax hitting her after meeting Olivia, and Alex sent a quick glance in her direction. “Tired?”

  “A little. I didn’t get as much sleep last night as I probably should have.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “I’m not.”

  The smile he flashed her then was so brilliant that she could practically feel herself reviving in its warmth, like a sunflower lifting its head to the life-sustaining rays of the sun. But as good as it felt, it wasn’t quite enough to keep her from yawning again.

  “Maybe we should stop in El Centro or Yuma or someplace, get you something to eat.”

  “I’m fine,” Caitlin protested. “I’d rather just keep going.”

  “Is that a feeling, or just personal preference?”

  She paused to think about it for a few seconds. “A little of both, maybe.” On the way to Temecula, Alex had had to stop to fill up the Pathfinder, and he’d bought them some bottled water at the attached convenience store. The water would be enough to keep her going. She really didn’t feel hungry, even though breakfast was hours and hours ago now. Something was telling her that they needed to get back to Arizona as quickly as they could, and stopping for even fast food didn’t fit into that plan.

  “Okay,” he said. “And then when we get back to Tucson, I’ll take you to the restaurant that invented the chimichanga. I have a feeling by then you’ll be hungry.”

  �
��It’s a deal,” she replied. “I’ve never had a chimichanga.”

  “Then that’s definitely where we’re going.” He was still smiling, but his expression turned serious as he added, “I think this time we’re really going to catch him.”

  “I hope so.” For whatever reason, the same sixth sense that was telling her they needed to get to Tucson ASAP was remaining quiet on the subject of Matías’ eventual capture. It could be that conclusion was a given, now that they had a solid lead, but Caitlin wasn’t so sure. The warlock was a ghost, elusive as quicksilver.

  Alex nodded, then took his phone out of his pocket and set it in a little depression in the dash, one that seemed to have been designed to hold a cell phone. Maybe he hoped it would get better reception there, rather than buried in his pocket.

  But there was no return call from Miguel, and as the miles slipped past, Caitlin could feel weariness taking hold. She reclined her seat to get more comfortable, and Alex turned down the volume on the radio slightly, as if he could tell she wanted to rest. That would probably be best. Just an hour or so of sleep while they cruised through the most barren parts of the desert. Then she’d be rested up when they got to Tucson, and they could figure out where to go from there. With any luck, Miguel would have gotten back to Alex by then, and they’d have a plan of action. Some way of catching up with Matías, who might as well be in the witness protection program for all the luck they’d had tracking him down so far.

  Her eyelids slipped closed, and for a while it was just blissful darkness, the quiet of sleep. But then she heard voices, and although everything was still dark, she thought she knew who was speaking.

  “…Man, you really need to switch them out. This one’s just about tapped,” came a male voice. Not Matías, but either Jorge or Tomas. Tomas, probably; he was a tenor rather than a baritone, his words sounding slightly nasal.