“You should have taken the deal,” I said.
“What deal?”
“The one where you never touched my family again.”
He spat at my boot.
“You think this ends me?”
“No,” I said. “You ended yourself. I just kept you busy long enough to show it.”
Police lights painted the rain red and blue through the windows.
For once, I stayed.
Detective Ramos entered with a tactical team and a face that said he wanted to arrest everyone, including the weather. He found Maurice bleeding, Van alive, one dead soldier, two wounded, and me with my hands raised.
“Mr. Horn,” he said, “you are exhausting.”
“Good to see you too.”
Maurice shouted from the floor, “He set me up!”
Ramos looked around at the guns, blood, drugs on the back table, and Van still shaking by the pipe.
“Did he make you bring half an arsenal to a boat shop too?”
Maurice shut up.
Enrique disappeared that night.
That should have felt like failure, but it did something better. It frightened Maurice. A missing right hand is worse than a dead one. A dead man has chosen a side. A missing man might be talking.
By morning, every news station had the story. Gang violence at the docks. Multiple arrests. Possible internal dispute. Los Muertos leadership under investigation.
No mention of Jacob. Good.
Liliana called while I sat in the station giving my statement.
“You are lucky,” she said.
“I hear that a lot.”
“You should hear it more sincerely. Van is cooperating. Quinton Parks called the prosecutor at six this morning. He wants protective custody for his family.”
I leaned back.
The first wall had fallen.
“What about Maurice?”
“Hospital under guard. Charges coming.”
“And Enrique?”
“Gone.”
That name stayed in the air between us.
Because men like Enrique do not vanish to retire.
When I finally reached the cabin, Jacob was awake on the porch in one of Bea’s oversized sweaters. His casts stuck out like blue branches. The forest behind him dripped with rain.
“You smell like smoke again,” he said.
I sat beside him.
“I know.”
“Did you fight?”
I wanted to lie. A clean, fatherly lie. Something about police handling it. Something about everything being fine.
Instead I said, “I made sure some bad men couldn’t hurt you.”
He nodded slowly.
“Are you bad too?”
The question broke something open in me.
