Miss Bala

Chapter 20: Fire in the Hole

I was sitting with Gemma when Irene came up to us.

"Can you tell Tucán I'm going to head over to the hospital? I'll call as soon as I hear something."

"Yeah, okay. Thanks." Gemma replied.

There was no need to tell him anything because Tucán walked out right on time. Lino followed through also.

"Hey, they're waiting for you." Gemma told Lino as he sat beside me, placing a kiss on my cheek.

"Yeah, I know."

I didn't really respond back and he noticed.

"What?"

"Someone just blew up your friend with a car bomb." I don't see how he expected me to act any other way.

"We don't know what happened."

I looked at him, wondering why he was playing dumb. We knew who did it.

"We watched it happened. I mean, who else could it have been?" I realized I raised my voice a little once I seen Gemma look at us.

He exhaled loudly, "Look, I'm not sure who did it and that's the truth.."

On the opposite side of us, I heard Irene ask if Tucán was in danger. Then she asked if she was in danger. His silence was her answer. She didn't say anything else to him and walked away.

Lino must of heard too cause he got me to look at him again and said "I'm sure nothing is going to happen. We just gotta be smart, a little more cautious, all right? It's gonna be okay, chula."

"Not it's not."

He didn't have anything else to say but, "I have to go deal with this."

I nodded.

After he went inside, I looked at Gemma.

"This explosion.. those the same people who attacked you?"

"And if it was?" She sounded hostile.

"Maybe if you had told someone about what happened-"

"This isn't on me." She stood up. Her tone sounded as if she was trying to convince herself more than trying to convince me.

I stood there by myself after she walked away too.

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The next morning, Lino woke me up.

"Chula, I need you to go with me."

"Where?" I moved the covers off me, trying to wake up.

"Made a small deal with Padilla. We're gonna do some digging on Winston and Zoebelle. But I can't let the guys know right now. They won't suspect anything if you come with me...Plus with everything going on, it'll give me a piece of mind that you're close."

"Okay," I got up, "I just need to get dressed."

About an hour later, me, Lino, and Padilla we're walking up to a house that looked like nobody was home. Before we got closer to the front door, Lino stopped in front of me. I looked down to see he was handing me a gun.

"You know what to do."

I grabbed it from him and we kept walking.

The doors were locked and nobody was answering. Then at the corner of my eye, I seen the blinds move from the window closest to me.

"Window." I pointed out to Lino and Padilla nodded.

"I saw it, stay here." Lino told Padilla, leaving him at the front door as we headed around back.