Bridge of Shadows by Rachel Caine

Author:Rachel Caine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2021-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

November 23, 1996

Dr. Ana Gutierrez

By the time two days had passed, she was able to get through a day without betraying her fear; the work helped, helped enormously. These people needed, her, and she could not, would not let them down.

As she took advantage of a lull in the waiting room to gulp down a cold drink, Rafael looked up from the desk where he was preparing paperwork and said, “You’ve been different lately.”

Her throat clenched, and she almost coughed. It was an effort of will to swallow the mouthful of soda, but she managed somehow, smiled, and said, “How?”

“I don’t know.” He studied her curiously, tapping a pen on a battered clipboard. “Just now, when you were with that girl—it was as if you really loved her. Ana. That’s dangerous, isn’t it? To care so much?”

She almost laughed this time, and restrained herself again. Dangerous? The last thing she had to fear was her heart breaking. She’d welcome that kind of pain.

“Yes, you’re probably right,” she said instead. “But she reminded me of myself at that age. X was a wild thing, you know. Angry.”

“I never would have guessed,” he said, and stretched. “Tell me.”

“What’s to tell? Fast friends, fast cars, guns, knives, drugs, the usual thing. Only I think I saw early that it was all going nowhere, all this running. And I decided I’d rather go somewhere.”

“What about your friends? You left them all behind?”

She took another drink. It didn’t taste sweet this time; it was bitter as gall. “Not all.”

She was saved from further conversation by the arrival of a large and noisy family infected with lice, and it became an afternoon of cutting hair and shampooing crying children. As she was shampooing the mother’s hair, the woman said in Spanish. “You hear about the bomb, yes?”

“I heard,” she said, suddenly aware of the camera at the corner of the room, Rámon’s unblinking eye.

“It’s time someone did it,” the woman said, and there was vicious satisfaction in her voice. “I was beaten by la migra, you know. So was my husband. They made us pay them money.”

The story was a common one, but this time it froze Ana’s heart. She had been so preoccupied with her revulsion for the murders that she’d forgotten how others might see it, as a just and justified action, a valid shot in an ongoing war. Whether any of the stories were true or not, the barrio people were terrified of Immigration, and hated them in equal measure. And everyone had a story. Everyone knew someone who’d been beaten, raped, allowed to drown as la migra laughed. No one knew Pete, or wanted to. No one had seen him carrying that wounded Mexican child in his arms.

It was terrifyingly easy to hate. She’d done it, and she knew.

“You don’t mean that,” she said aloud. “None of us wanted murder.”

“No?” The woman tilted her head up to look at her, bleak, black amusement in her eyes. “Maybe not you, la doctora, with your fine education and money, but my people wanted blood.

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