Free Hailey's War by Jodi Compton Page A

Los Angeles and charged with some kind of obstruction. It wasn’t the charge that would be problematic, but jail would actually be the easiest place for Marsellus to get at me. Anyone gang-connected could.
    CJ would have stayed longer with me in San Francisco, but I hadn’t let him. When we parted, we’d both acted with exaggerated casualness. He’d said, “Look, I’ll come up and visit you soon. I’ll be around so much you’ll be sick of me,” and I’d said, “Sure, I know,” and we’d hugged and then he’d driven away, toward the 101 back home.
    In those first weeks, I’d lived with a drab, hollow feeling not unlike how addicts describe their first day without alcohol or a cigarette:
Is this what my life’s going to be, from here on out?
I’d alternated between that sense of lonely tedium and a stomach-clenching guilt. I’m not sure those feelings ever went away, but they did lessen. In time, I found an adrenaline-junkie job and threw myself into it. I made more money than I needed and stashed it carelessly in a coffee can. I made a few friends and drank with them. Drank without them, too. I met Jack Foreman.
    But I still felt restless at times, particularly in early summer, when business at Aries was slowest and San Francisco was shrouded in the kind of weather coastal Californians called June gloom. That was probably why, in the end, I called Serena back and told her I’d take a girl I’d never met to the mountains of inland Mexico.

seven
    Several days later, sometime after nine in the evening, I was parked in front of a house in a working-class section of Oakland. It was an inexpensively well-kept place, with a small trimmed lawn, and no weeds between the stepping-stones that led to the house. There was a geranium by the front door, blooming red. This was where Nidia Hernandez was staying with friends.
    Shay had looked pretty sour when I told him I was taking nearly two weeks off, but there was nothing he could do. I was an independent contractor; I worked, or not, at both my will and his. He could have fired me just as easily.
    That afternoon, packing had been quick and easy. Hot-weather clothes, one heavy jacket for the evenings. A recently purchased guidebook to Mexico. A bottle of Bacardi and several minis of Finlandia, tucked protectively between layers of clothing. The little care package Serena had sent to me—a sheaf of twenties and fifties, the promised expense money, and a handful of Benzedrines wrapped in foil, to help me stay alert on the road. The rest of my pay would wait until I was on my way back up north; Serena and I had arranged that I’d stop at her place and we’d settle up then.
    Finally I’d cleaned and oiled the Airweight, which was now taped under the front seat of the car I’d rented. I didn’t expect any trouble in Mexico. I was just being careful.
    A young man with a peach-fuzz mustache answered the door when I knocked. “Are you Hailey?” he said.
    â€œI’m in the right place, then.”
    â€œYeah, hello, yeah,” he said, and moved aside. I stepped into anarrow entryway of brown-checked linoleum, and the boy called to someone farther back in the house in Spanish so rapid I didn’t catch much of it, except for Nidia’s name.
    A middle-aged woman came around the corner into the entryway. She was thin, with red-tinted hair pinned up on her head.
    â€œIs it her?” she said in a gently accented voice. “Oh, please come in. My name is Herlinda.”
    â€œHailey,” I said.
    â€œCome into the kitchen.”
    I followed her. The floorboards felt slightly warped under my feet, and the house smelled of many, many meals cooked there. We rounded a corner, and I got my first look at Nidia Hernandez.
    She was sitting in a chair slightly pushed back from the kitchen table, two scuffed suitcases at her feet. I could see where she’d draw unwanted masculine