It felt as if hours had passed by before another car pulled up. The doors opened and the three shooters climbed into the vehicle, taking off with tires squealing. Esai's heart was leaping in his chest. Again and again he saw the image of his mother lying on the floor, followed by images of Jamie and Tessa lying dead under the table. Once he was sure the men were gone, he ran downstairs. Paramedics had entered the house through the back door, already taking care of his mother. Before he could ask how she was, Jamie flew her arms around him, holding him tight. She wasn't crying, but he could feel her tremble. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against chest.
"It's over baby," he said in a shaky voice. Taking a deep breath, he buried his nose in her hair. "It's over."
He was proud of her, proud because she hadn't panicked. Instead, she had taken care of his little sister. His father had been wrong. She was the perfect Old Lady. Raking his fingers through her hair, he pulled back his face to look at her. Her skin was pale, her eyes wide.
"You okay?" he asked quietly.
She nodded, over his shoulder she looked at his mother. A moment later, her glance wandered off to Tessa, who was still hiding under the table.
"I'll take her upstairs," she whispered. "She shouldn't see her mom like this."
Esai nodded. Leaning into her, he kissed her lips, then he let go of her. While Jamie helped his sister from under the table, Esai turned to his father, who had knelt down next to his wife and was holding her hand while the paramedics were examining her.
"Is it bad?" he asked his father.
Marcus looked up, the restlessness in his eyes causing a stab in his stomach. "She lost a lot of blood."
Esai nodded. His glance was drawn back to her body; the sight of all the blood made him feel sick. She had closed her eyes, seemed to have lost her consciousness. He was relieved that she wasn't in any pain right now, but it also scared him. Did this mean that her body was losing the fight? One didn't lose his consciousness without a good reason...
His mother was hoisted on a gurney, his father got on his feet and laid a hand on Esai's shoulder. "I'm glad you and your girl are okay, son."
Esai nodded quietly.
"I'll go to the hospital with your mom. Can you inform the others?"
"Yeah."
His father squeezed his shoulder, then he followed the paramedics outside. Esai took a deep breath. Once he was sure that his voice was no longer trembling, he called Norberto, his vicepresident. Briefly he described the shooting, telling him his mother had been transferred to the hospital.
"Is there anything we can do?"
Esai looked around. The place was torn to pieces. "Maybe you can sent a few girls to clean the place up? And a prospect to get a new window. It's a fucking mess around here, man."
"Got it. The rest of us will go to the hospital. Was it Ramirez?"
"I wouldn't know who else."
"I'll let someone ask around, there have to be witnesses."
"Okay, thanks." Esai ended the call and put the device away.
A little awkwardly he turned to Jamie's mothers who had retreated to the kitchen. Strangely they looked less shocked than he'd expected. He thought back to the gun Roman had carried, making him wonder if they had been faced with danger before.
Just when he wanted to ask them where Roman had gone to, someone opened the front door. Jamie's brother stood still in the doorway between the hallway and the living room, motioning Esai to come over. Esai walked over to him, noticing the blood stain on his sleeve.
"You're hit?"
"Just a graze," the man answered indifferently. "Who did this?"
"Club enemies," he muttered. He couldn't give too much details, even though he understood that Roman had probably concluded that he was nothing but a danger to his little sister. It wasn't something he could disagree with, and if he was honest, all this made him doubt his relationship too. He didn't want her to get hurt. At the same time, he knew he couldn't push everyone away just because he was afraid they would get hurt. "They never attacked our house before," he said. It sounded like a weak defense. "It's a kind of unwritten rule, y'know? Leavin' kids and women out of our shit."
"Then how can you be sure this were club enemies?"
Esai shrugged his shoulders. "Who else could it be?"
Roman studied his face, then he looked around. "Where's Jamie?"
"Upstairs, with Tessa."
The man sighed. "Okay. I gotta tell you something, but not here."
Esai followed Roman outside, who walked to his rental car and leaned against the hood. Esai came to stand next to him, giving him a questioning look. What was going on?
"Jamie has a tattoo on her back."
"Yeah," he said. "Some kind of Mayan symbol, right?"
"It has characteristics of both Mayan and Aztec designs. Researchers believe it's some intermediate culture, of which only one center is known. The symbol was depicted on a giant tile in the middle of a temple floor. My uncle was studying the place, he was the one documenting the symbol. Not much later the temple was destroyed and my uncle possessed the only documentation. Its value was still unknown, he left it lying around in his study and that's where Jamie found it. Only later, he discovered that the symbol contained an instruction to find a lost city, possibly the fabulous El Dorado."
"The golden city," Esai understood. There were a hundred movies about that topic, and therefore it felt like Roman was reading him a movie script. He felt the urge to laugh, but the serious look in Roman's eyes and the image of his bleeding mother stopped him from doing so.
"Exactly. My uncle's study was raided while my uncle was somewhere in the middle of nowhere, his wife was tortured to extract information. She however wasn't able to say anything, for my uncle had taken his laptop and camera with him and Jamie had borrowed the sketch, not suspecting anything."
There was a stinging feeling in his stomach. "And you think they know Jamie has that tattoo."
"My uncle destroyed all the evidence — the tattoo is the only source that is still accessible to them. I don't know how they found out about it, maybe they came across a picture."
Esai was silent for a while, trying to get his thoughts in order. "She doesn't know, does she?"
"No."
"Why don't you erase the tattoo? Black it out?"
"How would you explain that to her?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"You know my sister. She is curious. If she knew there was a coded message on that tattoo, she would try to crack the code. She's an archaeologist, after all. She would leave traces on the internet and they would find her. Even when the tattoo is gone, they'd want to have her because her memory is their only lead."
"Or her uncle's memory, right?"
Roman nodded. "But a young girl is easier to break."
Esai ran a hand across his face. "Damn. That's quite something, huh?"
"Last year I led them into an ambush and I killed them. Later however I heard that at least one of them made it to the hospital; and I don't know what happened to him since. I deemed the risk very low... but now I'm wondering if I made a mistake..."
"Things have been turbulent lately," Esai said. "We're in a fight with a street gang, there are two deaths on their side. I think this was payback."
Especially because he had been the one pulling the trigger. He however didn't say it out loud, he had no idea how Roman would react and he didn't want Jamie to know that he was a killer.
"Keep me posted, okay? If there is a chance that Jamie was today's target, I need to know."
Esai nodded. "I will. If you keep me posted about that group as well."
"Obviously. But don't try to look into them; you will only increase the chance of them finding her."
Esai agreed, there after both guys pushed themselves away from the car and went back inside.
