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.Blackish-green and slimy, it looked like an oil slick inside the broken Sheetrock.Magoo gave the section below the break a light kick, and more plaster crumbled, revealing sludge-thick layers.Grabbing a loose corner of the carpet, he peeled it back to expose a stained and stinking pad.“From the flood—the flood last spring,” rasped Reagan.“The—complex never made—never made repairs.”Nodding, Magoo said, “You go on out—right now.Call for backup.Use your inhaler.I’ll get the patient’s medicine and get her out of here.The whole family, too, if I can talk the senora into it.”“Thanks,” said Reagan.She hobbled in the direction of the ambulance, pausing only long enough to take a puff from the inhaler in her pocket.As she retraced her earlier path, it seemed even darker and the rutted sidewalk more determined to bring her to her knees.She stepped carefully, some paranoid corner of her mind hissing a warning that if she went down here, the lowlifes who’d thrown the bottle would appear from nowhere to swarm over her like vermin.Shuddering at the thought, she picked up her pace.It was just after ten-thirty on a moonlit Saturday evening, yet she saw no one about.She heard plenty, though, from inside the apartments: snatches of raucous Mexican music, the blaring of a TV, and the unmistakable sounds of a couple arguing, although they shouted in a language that might be Vietnamese.Speaking more familiar Spanish, one woman warned another, “Ojo, es el carro del patrón.Él está aquí para su dinero.”Look out, Reagan mentally translated, her high-school Spanish kicking in.That car belongs to el patrón—whoever that might be.He’s here for his money.By the time Reagan reached the parking lot, her breathing had eased somewhat, and she had no difficulty calling for support.As she opened the back of the ambulance, she reached into her pocket to pull out the inhaler for one more hit, but a car parked nearby attracted her attention.Not the half-stripped Honda, which sat abandoned with all four doors flung open, but a larger sedan two spaces down.Forgetting the inhaler, she limped toward the dented Ford, an ancient beater that was in worse shape than her Trans Am.After first checking to be sure the car was empty, she pulled a slim flashlight from her breast pocket, then shone its thin beam along the crumpled fender.With that spot of light, she saw that the car was the avocado green she had expected, the exact shade of the sedan she’d spotted leaving Jack Montoya’s clinic two weeks earlier.Moving around to the front, she ignored the Oklahoma plates—probably stolen—and stared at the same grill that had come so close to running her down in the clinic lot.She repositioned her light to find several spots on the chrome bumper that were scarred with bright red paint.Paint from Jack’s Explorer, unless she missed her guess.Her breath hissing, she took a step back—a step directly into something huge and solid that exploded into motion, wrapping a thick arm around her throat.Adrenaline surged through her like a jolt from a defibrillator.Unable to scream, she fought like the hellcat Peaches had once named her, striking backward with her elbow, bringing her booted foot down hard on his, and biting the bastard’s forearm until she heard him scream.“You bitch!” With that, he slammed her forward with such force that her body folded over the sedan’s hood and her forehead slammed against the windshield.She must have hit her mouth, too, for it flooded with a wash that tasted like hot metal.Spitting blood, she struggled to push herself upright.Run now.Scream, her brain ordered her aching body, but before she could do anything, her attacker’s big hand gripped the back of her neck, and her legs went loose as ribbons.“He was fucking right,” the man screamed in her ear.“Fucking right I shoulda killed you.”Deep and booming, the voice reverberated around the inside of her skull.The sound made Reagan want to vomit.There was a terrible groan, like metal twisting or an animal dying.She was the source, she realized, hurting so badly that it barely registered when he grabbed her around the waist and lifted her as if she were a sack of grapefruit.As her body drooped forward at the waist, Reagan’s vision grayed out.“He goddamned always has to be right,” he muttered as he half carried and half dragged her.“I never should’ve let myself feel sorry for the bastard.”A second wave of panic overwhelmed her.Now that she’d stopped screaming, the voice sounded familiar—and the suspicion that she knew her attacker convinced her she was in even worse trouble than she’d feared.Was he putting her in his car, taking her away to—? God, he would have no choice now but to kill her.Would Magoo come out and save her? Or maybe the pumper and the paramedics she had called? Or someone, anyone who might help—even her earlier tormentors with their lewd suggestions and their bottles.Her attacker stopped abruptly, and Reagan felt huge hands all over her body.With a cry of protest, she jerked toward full awareness and began to struggle.He clamped down on her throat again, cutting off her air, as his free hand finished emptying her pockets, taking her wallet, keys, inhaler, and God only knew what else.But her hopes that this was merely a robbery faded when he hurled her things into the tall weeds beyond the parking lot.An instant later, she felt herself tumbling forward.She held on to consciousness by a hairbreadth as the gray haze darkened to an inky blackness
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