3: Catalina

The man didn’t look like someone holding fifteen years’ worth of answers. He looked like someone who desperately needed a shower.

Catalina stood in the narrow alley behind Rosario’s Diner, her arms folded tightly across her chest as she watched him finish his cigarette. Grease, stale beer, and damp cardboard hung thick in the humid morning air. A dying security light buzzed overhead, barely noticeable beneath the growing daylight as it threw faint shadows across the brick walls. Every instinct told her to leave.

The stranger checked his cheap wristwatch before lifting his eyes to her. “You came alone.”

“You sound disappointed.”

A grin spread across his weathered face. “I expected someone older.”

“I expected someone cleaner,” she fired back.

His grin only widened. “So you’re Catalina.”

Her expression didn’t change. Very few people still knew she was investigating her mother’s death. Most assumed she had finally accepted the official story of an accidental overdose and moved on, but she never had. He took a deep drag from the cigarette lodged between his fingers.

“You said you had information,” Catalina said.

“I do.”

“About my mother?”

“Maybe.” He flicked his cigarette ashes with a gentle tap.

She hated that word. Maybe the evidence was misplaced. Maybe the witness remembered wrong. Maybe the files were incomplete. Maybe she would never know the truth. Fifteen years of her life had been built on maybes.

“I’m tired of maybe,” she said quietly.

The man shrugged. “I’m tired of talking for free.”

He reached into his worn leather jacket and pulled out a thick brown envelope. Catalina’s heartbeat slowed. Hope was dangerous, but it still found her every time.

“Five hundred dollars,” he said.

She blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Cash.” He took another drag and coughed.

Her eyebrows lifted. “You want me to hand over five hundred dollars before I’ve even seen what’s inside?”

“You’ll see it after you pay.” He shrugged and tapped his cigarette again.

“No,” Catalina said, folding her arms across her chest.

His smile faltered. “No?”

“I’ve spent years chasing lies.” She folded her arms tighter. “I’m not buying another one.”

The alley fell silent. He tapped the envelope with one finger. “This is your last chance.”

Catalina stared at it. Five hundred dollars. Weeks of double shifts. Money she had been saving for her licensing exams. Money she couldn’t afford to lose. But what if this was finally real?

She swallowed. “Open it.”

“No.”

“One page,” she negotiated.

“No.”

A tiny smile touched Catalina’s lips. “If you really had evidence,” she said softly, “you’d be terrified I’d recognize it.”

His jaw tightened.

She stepped closer. “You’ve never seen the report. You don’t know anything.”

His eyes flickered. She saw fear flicker across them. Not the fear of losing money but the fear of being caught.

Catalina exhaled through her nose. “I skipped studying for tomorrow’s pharmacology exam for this.”

“Not my problem.”

“No.” She looked at the envelope one last time. “My problem is believing people.”

Before he could react, she snatched it from his hands.

“What the—” He reached forward.

The envelope tore open. Loose papers scattered across the filthy pavement. Catalina bent down and picked one up. It was a printout of Madrid’s subway map. She picked another. It was a tourist brochure.

She stared at them. “Are you kidding me?”

The man lunged for the papers. Catalina shoved him backward, and he stumbled against a dumpster, cursing. She kept going, scooping up the rest.

Restaurant menus, a faded real-estate flyer. Something that looked like a torn grocery list. Nothing. Absolutely nothing useful. Rage rose hot and fast in her throat. She crumpled the papers and threw them at his chest.

“You absolute waste of oxygen,” she yelled.

He recovered quickly and grabbed her wrist. “You crazy bitch—”

Catalina didn’t think. She twisted, drove her knee up hard, and caught him between the legs. He folded with a strangled sound. She yanked her arm free and stepped back, breathing hard.

“Touch me again,” she said, her voice low and steady, “and I’ll make sure the next thing you sell is your own teeth.”

He knelt on the ground, groaning. Catalina turned and walked out of the alley without looking back. Her hands were shaking, not from fear but from the same old disappointment that always came after hope.

She cut through the side street and headed toward the bus stop, already calculating how many hours she had just wasted. Her pharmacology textbook sat in her bag like a silent accusation. She had two chapters left, maybe three, the numbers blurred together when she was this tired.

Her phone buzzed.

Elena: Where are you? You said ten minutes. It’s been forty.

Catalina typed back with one thumb.

Catalina: Got delayed by an idiot. On my way.

The reply came almost immediately.

Elena: Another one?

Catalina: The worst kind.

She reached the stop just as the bus pulled up. The air conditioning hit her like a blessing. She dropped into a seat near the back, clutching her bag against her chest as she stared out the window and watched the city slide past. The city looked the same as always—bright, loud, full of people who had somewhere better to be. She felt like the only one still stuck in the same year.

By the time she reached campus, the sun had already baked the sidewalks. Elena was waiting under the shade of the nursing building with two iced coffees. She took one look at Catalina’s face and held out the cup without a word.

“Thanks,” Catalina muttered, taking a long drink.

“How bad?”

“Bro literally packaged trash in a fancy envelope!”

Elena winced. “Ouch.”

“And I almost paid him,” she said and blew a hair out of her face.

“But you didn’t.”

“Doesn’t make me feel smarter.” Catalina groaned.

They walked into the building together. The hall smelled of disinfectant and burnt coffee from the faculty lounge. Students hurried past with textbooks and tired eyes. Catalina’s own eyes felt like someone had poured sand into them.

“You still coming to the lab?” Elena asked.

“If I don’t fall asleep standing up.”

“You always say that and then you ace everything.”

“Today feels different,” Catalina replied, shrugging her heavy bag off her shoulders. “So we need to carry so much books?” she pouted.

Elena bumped her shoulder. “It always feels different, and the books you know you can't get class pass without them.”

Catalina groaned. Elena had been there since their first semester. They had met in these same hallways, became besties immediately, and started sharing an apartment the next semester.

Anatomy lab was its usual controlled chaos. Professor Morales moved between tables like a man who had already decided half the class would fail by midterms. Catalina forced herself to focus. By the time the afternoon lecture ended, her notebook was full and her head was empty.

She caught Elena outside. “I have to go home and change,” Catalina said. “Marcus will kill me if I'm late again.”

“There’s still time. You’re just being dramatic.”

“You know I’m on thin ice with him after the last incident,” she groaned.

Elena studied her for a second. “You okay? Really?”

Catalina shrugged. “I’m always okay until I’m not.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I’ve got right now.”

Elena hugged her, and her perfume smelled like citrus. Catalina held on a second longer than usual before pulling away, and they headed for the bus stop again.

Their apartment was on the third floor of an aging building. It was small—two bedrooms, a tiny living room, windows that never quite closed all the way, and an air conditioner that rattled noisily.

Catalina kicked off her sneakers, dropped her bag, and stood in the middle of the living room for a long moment while Elena headed straight to her room.

One wall was covered with newspaper clippings, printed hospital records with blacked-out names, timelines written in different colors of pen, photographs of buildings she had never been allowed inside, and a map of the old children’s hospital with red circles around dates that she still couldn't figure out. In the center of it all was a single name written in careful block letters:

ASHFORD.

She stared at it the way she always did, as though the letters might rearrange themselves into an explanation if she looked long enough.

Her mother had been thirty-two, and Catalina had been nine. One day there had been hospital visits, soft voices, and promises that everything would be fine. The next thing she knew, there had been silence, a closed casket, and people who stopped answering questions. Then she had been moved to a private ward, and the hospital had suddenly stopped demanding payments.

The official story had never sat right with her. Accidental overdose. No further investigation needed. Catalina had spent the years since collecting every scrap she could find.

She reached up and touched the edge of one yellowed article. The paper felt thin beneath her fingers. Sometimes she wondered who she would be if she ever found the truth. Sometimes she wondered if she would even recognize herself without the search.

The clock on the microwave chimed. She looked at it and cursed. She had forty minutes to get ready and leave for Verve. Forty minutes was never enough for her to dress up with. Catalina exhaled, turned away from the wall, and walked into her bedroom. She couldn't be late again, or Marcus would have her head.