Chapter 46: The Encrypted Burner

Rayén

Ismael's words stayed in the air like smoke. It isn't empty anymore.

I turned around slowly. Lautaro was already looking at me. He didn't look like a Don right then. He looked like a man waiting to be hit.

"Say something," I told him.

"Rayén..."

"Where is the mausoleum, Lautaro? And why would my mother pick that gate?"

Millaray shifted by the wall. Carlos and the other guard, Mateo, stared at the floor like it was the most interesting thing they'd ever seen.

"It's on the hill behind your family's old house," Lautaro said. "Your father buried a coffin there eleven weeks ago. Your brother wasn't in it. It was sandbags, Rayén. I watched the stone door close with my own eyes."

"Then what's in there now?"

"I don't know."

I had never heard him say those words. Not once. It scared me more than any knife on that tray.

"You let me cry over an empty box," I said. My voice cracked in the middle, and I hated that he heard it. "Eleven weeks, I lay awake planning how to kill you, and the whole time..."

"The whole time you were hating me, he was breathing. That was the deal I made." He didn't blink. "If you'd known, you would've gone looking. Your mother's people were watching you. I picked his life over your anger. I'd do it again."

The worst part is that I understood. The worst part is that I would've done the same.

I wanted to scream at him. Instead I saw it: a dark patch spreading through the white bandage under his collar. Fresh blood. He'd been standing here, threatening a man, with his own wound tearing open, and he hadn't said a word.

"You're bleeding."

"It's nothing."

"Sit down."

"I'm fine."

I crossed the floor before I could think about it and pressed my palm flat against the bandage. He sucked in a breath through his teeth. Under my hand, his heart was pounding so hard it almost hurt me.

Neither of us moved.

For three years I'd imagined his heartbeat stopping under my blade. I never imagined it would feel like this, quick and human and scared.

"Don't look at me like that," he said, very low.

"Like what?"

"Like you might forgive me. I haven't earned it yet."

I pulled my hand back. It was red. I wiped it on my trousers and turned away, because if I stayed another second, I'd say something I couldn't take back.

My eyes landed on the steel tray. On the black phone sitting beside the tools.

"That's his," I said. "Isn't it?"

"We took it off him at the treeline," Carlos said. "Burner. No brand. We've tried everything. Seven wrong codes already. Three more and it wipes itself."

"Fingerprint?"

"He keeps his fist shut. If we break his fingers, we lose the print. It reads for a live finger, not a scared one." Carlos rubbed his neck. "Don Lautaro said to give him till sunrise."

"We don't have till sunrise." I picked up the phone. It was lighter than I expected. "My mother's told us when to come. Everything she does has a clock on it. If this has her number, I want it before we move."

"He'll never give it to you," Lautaro said.

"He won't give it on purpose." I looked at the man in the chair. "Cut his right hand loose."

"Rayén."

"Do it."

Mateo cut the strap. Ismael's hand dropped into his lap, fingers shaking. He watched me like a dog watches a shoe.

I crouched in front of him again. I made my voice soft, the way I used to talk to Conco when he had nightmares.

"Ismael. I need to ask you something, and I want you to really think about your answer. Isabel. Does she keep her phone near the bakery counter, or in her apron?"

His face went tight. "Don't."

"I'm not going to hurt her. I want to warn her. If my mother's people are going to come to Rancagua tonight, somebody has to tell her to leave." I held up the burner. "But I don't have her number. You do. And you're the only one she'll listen to."

"You're lying."

"Maybe." I let him see that I was tired, and that part wasn't an act. "Or maybe I'm the only person in this house who's trying to keep your mother alive. Which is it, Ismael? You have about a minute to decide."

His breathing came quick. His eyes went to the phone, to Lautaro, back to me.

"Her number's under Pan," he whispered. "Bread. I saved it as bread."

"Then show me. Quick. Before it's too late."

I put the phone in his open hand. His thumb moved before his brain caught up. It was pure instinct, a man reaching for the only thing he loved.

The screen lit.

He realized what he'd done half a second later. His face fell apart.

"You said..."

"I know what I said." I took the phone out of his hand, and my own hands felt dirty. "And I'm sending someone to your sister tonight. I meant that part. I swear it on my brother."

He looked away. He didn't say anything else. That hurt worse than yelling.

I scrolled. No photos. No contacts except two. Pan, and a single name with a tiny bird for a picture.

Cóndor.

The messages went back weeks. Short ones. Times. Places. The gate. The seal. The wife. Then the last thing, sent forty minutes ago:

Did she listen?

And under it, Ismael's answer, sent just before they'd grabbed him: She'll come.

"He was reporting to her live," I whispered. "He told her I'd come."

"Then she knows we have him," Lautaro said.

"No. She wanted us to have him." My stomach turned over. "She planned the whole thing."

The phone buzzed in my palm.

I almost dropped it. A new message, from Cóndor. No words. Only a photograph.

I looked at it. And all the blood in my body went somewhere else.

It was this room. This exact basement. Taken from above and behind, a few seconds ago, from the top of the stairs. I could see the back of my own head. I could see my hand, red from Lautaro's blood, holding the phone. I could see him standing next to me, and the tray, and Millaray's pale face.

Four people had been in the room with me. Five, counting the man in the chair.

None of us had been on the stairs.

A second message slid in under the picture.

Tell my son-in-law to count his people, my darling. One of them is mine.

Above us, the heavy steel door, the one Carlos swore he'd locked, creaked open. Slowly. And a pair of shoes began to come down the stairs.