The Heist

cell phone to contact anyone, then ten minutes later the Viboras could know where we are or who I am. And then maybe the next thing that happens is they come here and kill us. Game over. Or maybe they show up at my sister’s house, shoot one of her kids to prove that they’re serious, and then use her as leverage to get me to give you up. And I will.”
    “You wouldn’t.”
    “In a nanosecond,” Kate said. “You either play by my rules, or you can walk out that door right now and take your own chances.”
    “You threw away my shoes,” he said.
    She tossed her car keys onto the kitchen table. “What’s your excuse now?”
    He scowled at the keys and then at her. He wasn’t going anywhere. “This sucks. The least you could have done was put me up in a decent hotel.”
    “Where the entire staff, probably half of them Mexican illegals with families living in Vibora-controlled territories, would know you were there and where we’d be putting every guest in the building at risk. Why would we do something as stupid as that?”
    “We don’t even have a TV in here,” he said.
    “Look at the bright side.” She gestured to the bookcase. “Now’s your chance to catch up on Nora Roberts.”
    Neal Burnside found fresh sheets in the closet, made the bed, and crawled under the covers while Kate remained in the living room, wide awake and standing guard.
    Coyotes were howling and owls were hooting in the darkness outside, and Burnside couldn’t sleep. The sounds made him think about all those cowboy movies he’d seen where the stupid settlers slept in their wagons and by their campfires, unaware that the howls and hoots were actually communications among the savage Indians, who were closing in on their camp to rape, torture, scalp, and kill them all.
    Burnside had an irrational urge to open the bedroom door, run into the living room, and warn Kate that the Indians were about to attack. Okay, he knew that was crazy. He knew there were no Indians out there. But what if the Viboras were out there hooting andhowling, getting ready to attack? That wasn’t so crazy, right? Burnside gave his head a shake. Of course it was crazy. Why would the Viboras use coyote calls? Besides, nobody but Carl Jessup knew where he was. That was a calming thought. Except whoever Jessup assigned to relieve O’Hare also knew. And whoever that agent might have told, like a wife or girlfriend, and probably while their maid or gardener or pool man was within earshot, who are probably Mexican, and probably illegal, and who probably have a relative, friend, or neighbor with ties to the Viboras. No, no, no, he told himself. FBI agents are trained to be discreet. They wouldn’t talk in front of their gardener about a witness they were protecting. Reality check. Who notices the help? When was the last time he’d paid any attention to what he was saying on the phone while Emilia cleaned the house, Enrique cleaned the pool, and mow-blow-and-go Julio did his lawn?
    What if there was a Hispanic custodian outside of Jessup’s office when he made the call? Or if there was a señorita watering the plants at the U.S. Marshals office when Jessup’s call came through?
    He knew that the last U.S. Census had revealed that 48 percent of the population of Los Angeles County were Latinos, the majority of them from Mexico, and those were just the people the census takers were able to count. That figure didn’t include the roughly 2.6 million illegal immigrants that the Department of Homeland Security estimated were in California, most of them also from Mexico, so the actual percentage of Latinos in Los Angeles County could be much, much,
much
higher. And of those 2.6 million illegal aliens, how many had been smuggled from Mexico into California by someone with connections to the Viboras? And how many were from the vast areas of Mexico under Vibora control? And how many of them, or their relatives back home, were doingbusiness with the Viboras? Whatever that number was, it had to be astronomical. So Burnside came to the horrifying irrational conclusion that more than half the people in Los Angeles could be on the lookout for him.
    My God, listen to yourself, he thought. That’s ridiculous. Half the population of Los Angeles isn’t after you. But he wasn’t listening to himself. He was listening to the Vibora assassins outside talking to one another in coyote and owl about attacking the cabin. Burnside gave a sigh of resignation and rolled out of bed.