“No way, Mercedes Ochoa-McPherson. I’m not going to have them come after you like they came for Wil,” I said. “Promise me you’ll stay away. And promise me you won’t tell Ian where I’ve gone, if he bothers to ask. Promise you won’t tell him any of this.”

“Milagro—” she began.

“Cricket and Ford would be alive if they hadn’t met Ian,” I said. “Promise me.”

She pressed her lips together and finally said, “Okay, I promise. Now get some rest and I’ll arrange things.”

I dropped back on the bed and pulled the leopard-print bedspread over me. I was dimly aware of Mercedes making phone calls and then Pepper arriving.

He shook me awake. He was a wall of a man with several tattoos (daggers, naked broads, Foghorn Leghorn) and a rusty-brown beard that sported tiny silver skull beads.

“Time to get up, babe.”

“Pepper!” I threw my arms around him and he gave me a smacking kiss on my cheek. He had a comforting aroma of bourbon with faint notes of exhaust and marijuana.

“You look like you been rode hard and put away wet, Milagro.”

“Now would be the time for you to lie about how I look,” I said. “You don’t have to do this. You’re risking your life.”

He laughed a big, booming laugh. “Hon, I was born risking my life. You and Mercedes are the prettiest accomplices I’ve had, though.”

“Who knew when we met that we’d still be friends?” I said. Oswald sure hadn’t; he’d never liked me going to the raucous bar where Pepper held court.

“Not me,” he said. “Ain’t fortune a queer bitch?”

“That she is, Pepper.”

A little after four in the morning, Pepper and I said good-bye to Mercedes.

My friend said, “If you need to call me, use Oswald’s office phone. The last time I talked to Gabriel, he told me he’d done a big security update on the family communications. I’ll be waiting to help any way you need me to.”

“Thanks. You know I love you, don’t you?”

She nodded. “Back atcha, Mil.”

She gave me a powerful hug and I held on tight, but not so tight that I would hurt her. “This is left over from the room charge,” she said as she tucked folded bills into my pocket.

I picked up the trash bin liner with my old clothes. “This needs to be burned.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

Pepper and I went to his Harley in the lot. The big man handed me a helmet and said, “Hoped we’d do this on a blazing day with you topless, your jugs smashed against me, and your hair flying in the wind.”

“There’s always the future.”