Protector(8)

Just up ahead was a large building, a store of some kind. Her vision was becoming blurry, so she couldn’t see what its sign said. But there were cars in the parking lot, and people coming and going. And she couldn’t walk much farther. Surely someone here would help her.

She pressed her hand against her side, attempting to conceal as much as she could of the blood that stained her clothing. Limping now, she staggered past the parked cars and went into the cool, air-conditioned interior of the building. Around her, she could hear gasps as the shoppers in the store appeared to take in her condition, but she couldn’t focus on any of them. Not really. Just up ahead was a tall young man in a white dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He looked handsome and friendly, with kind dark eyes.

Summoning the last of her strength, Caitlin went to him, grasped his arm. Her hand left bloody prints on his white shirt. His eyes widened, even as he reached out to catch her.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please help me.”

The world went dark.





2





Alex Trujillo shoved the clipboard under his arm and went back to the stockroom. Just as he’d expected, the bags of rice Luis said he couldn’t find were stacked right where Alex had known they would be, on the rack on the west wall. He tried not to sigh. It probably would have been easier if Luis was actually that stupid. He wasn’t, though…just lazy. And because he was Alex’s cousin, Alex couldn’t exactly fire him.

Just another day at Mercado Trujillo.

For most of his life, Alex had known this was where he’d probably end up, but that didn’t mean he had to be happy about it. His one chance at escape had been that kiss with Angela McAllister. If he’d turned out be her consort, he would have been up in Jerome…doing what, he wasn’t sure…but at least it wouldn’t be managing the store that had been in his father’s family for three generations now.

But he hadn’t been Angela’s soul mate. No, that role had gone to Connor Wilcox, of all people. Lucky bastard. It wasn’t as if Alex had thought he was in love with Angela or anything. He barely knew her. What he’d seen, he’d liked, and at the time he’d thought they could have been good together, if fate or the Goddess or whomever had seen fit to smile on their pairing. She’d been destined for other things, however, and so Alex had let it go. Mostly.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if his brother Diego could have shouldered part of the burden here. He was the oldest son, after all, and so he really should have been the one to take over the store, or at least the larger part of managing it. But last year he’d finally gotten around to getting married, to a woman whose family owned a vineyard down in Bisbee, and he’d gone to work there instead, using the excuse that Letty was an only child and that he was needed to help shoulder some of the burden.

Burden, Alex thought. Yeah, it must be really rough to spend your whole day tasting wine.

Intellectually, he knew there was more to managing a vineyard than that. And Diego’s new wife was a civilian, which meant Diego had to be on guard all the time. Maria knew about the de la Paz clan, that her husband’s family wasn’t exactly typical, but her own family didn’t have a clue about the de la Pazes. And they needed to be kept in the dark, for obvious reasons.

“Besides,” Luz Trujillo had pointed out to her son, probably trying to be helpful but in fact just making things worse, “why did you get those degrees in marketing and communications, if not to be more valuable to the store? I’m sure you’ll have all sort of ideas!”

He’d had ideas once. Unfortunately, none of them really applied to running a neighborhood mercado, even if said mercado had a thriving side business that most of its regular customers didn’t know anything about. Through a side door that most civilians thought led to another stockroom or possibly an office, you went into a second store, smaller, but stocked with the sorts of items the witches and warlocks in the area might need: crystals and other stones of power, herbs and floral essences, candles and saints’ icons and all manner of arcane items. Luz Trujillo, whose gifts included a facility with minor illusions, had cast a spell on that doorway so the civilians never quite noticed the parade of people going in and out during the hours the mercado was open for business.

“Luis,” Alex said to his cousin, who was lurking in the dry goods aisle, attempting to look busy but really eyeing a pretty girl who was inspecting the spice display, “the rice is on the shelf to your right as you go in the stockroom.” He’d tried to sound mild, but he couldn’t help letting an edge creep into his voice as he added, “The same place it’s always been.”