There was no gunshot.
No exploding ten-year-old head. No falling body. No blood.
Instead, Callahan blinked twice and opened her eyes, suddenly aware that the girl had completely vanished and that she, herself, was no longer standing between the two dilapidated shacks.
She sat on the floor of yet another alley. Her backpack was slung over her shoulder, her Glock safely tucked away inside, and she still held her phone in her hand, the GPS receiver showing that she was three streets away from where she’d stood only a split second ago.
What the hell?
Lifting her free hand, Callahan stared at it. It was shaking uncontrollably. Much more than a tremor now.
Had she fallen asleep, for Christ’s sake?
Right in the middle of a mission?
Had that whole episode with the girl been a hallucination? Some kind of bizarre, somnambulistic nightmare?
What else could it be?
Leaning back against a dilapidated, graffiti-covered fence-a fence she had no idea how she’d wound up sitting in front of-Callahan closed her eyes again, trying to find her bearings, trying to will the tremors away. Get them under control.
It’s okay, she told herself. Just a little glitch in the hardware. Nothing to worry about.
But who was she kidding?
This was no goddamn glitch. This was a sign of some very serious mental distress. Her problems with sleep depravation had just gone from a solid five to a record-breaking one hundred fifty in about two seconds flat. And if she wasn’t careful, if she didn’t get some fucking shut-eye soon, she might well wind up on a slab at the morgue.
She could still see the little girl’s face in her mind. Those defiant, amber-tinged eyes. And she was certain she’d seen the girl before.
But where?
There’s no saving us now. There’s no saving any of us.
Then it hit her.
Callahan could see herself sitting in her bedroom in her childhood home, years after her father had died, staring into the vanity mirror above her dresser, hating what she saw, hating her life, hating that Dad had shot himself and left her behind with the Wicked Witch of the West. Wanting more than anything to join him in heaven.
There’s no saving us now.
The little girl in the alley was her. At ten years old.
As the realization of this wormed its way into her brain and lodged there, sucking away her self-confidence, Callahan tried to pull herself together.
This was no time to be having a panic attack or nervous breakdown or whatever the hell you wanted to call it. She needed to man up, right now, no excuses.
No. Fucking. Excuses.
Wishing there was a coffee hut nearby so she could order a double espresso with a shot of Red Bull-and knowing that was probably the last thing she needed-she did her best to center herself. She was, after all, sitting in the middle of a hell on earth, and as inconvenient as that might be at the moment, she had a job to do.
She got to her feet. Took several deep cleansing breaths, telling herself to let it go, that this would pass, that everything would be just fine from here on out-and knowing full well that it wouldn’t be. But that was okay. She’d gotten through a number of tough situations on a lie.
Like her entire life.
The trick now was to pretend everything was back to normal and keep plunging forward.
Purging the face in the mirror from her mind, she consulted her GPS again, then took another deep breath and continued on her way.
She just hoped she wouldn’t wind up shirtless in a gutter somewhere with flies buzzing around her head.
De Souza’s compound sat on the side of a hill, a large, squat windowless gray building that had about as much personality as a World War II bunker. Several teenage boys formed a loose barricade out front, each carrying an automatic firearm.
Several others stood on the rooftop, their weapons ready.
They seemed to be waiting for her.
As she approached, keeping her hands at her sides, one of the older boys gave her the once-over and grinned, pleased by what he saw.
Another, younger boy, said, “This is not part of the tour, senhorita.”
“I’m here to see Jose de Souza.”
All the kids laughed, as if this were the most hilarious thing they’d ever heard. The older one had drawn closer now, still leering at her, and without even a hint of hesitation, he reached out and grabbed for her ass.
His hand was less than an inch away when Callahan caught hold of his wrist and twisted, pulling his arm behind his back as she quickly relieved him of his weapon and forced him to his knees.
Pointing the gun at his head, she said to the others, “De Souza. Tell him it’s about Gabriela Zuada.”
Calling Jose de Souza’s home a rat trap was being generous.
It was a tad less filthy than the rest of Paradise City, but that wasn’t saying much, and Callahan had to wonder why someone who was reportedly the highest-ranking drug lord in the area would be content to live in such squalor.
Despite a kind of dingy darkness to the place, there were some creature comforts in evidence. A sixty-inch plasma television played softly in a corner of the room, showing the never-ending news footage of Gabriela’s ongoing wake. Another corner sported an enclosed toilet, its door hanging open, the room surprisingly free of offensive smells. And a doorway to the left revealed a king-size bed, a couple dozen half-melted candles of various sizes lining a shelf directly above it.
A naked woman, with flawless, cocoa skin, lay fast asleep atop the mattress, her legs splayed out in front of her, leaving nothing to the imagination.
Spray-painted on the wall above the candles were yet more symbols-a pentagram, Lorraine cross, the now familiar A inside the circle, and others that Callahan wasn’t as familiar with. They hadn’t gotten there by accident, and only confirmed what she had already been told.
De Souza was a practicing Satanist.
But while the presence of these signs was certainly enough to raise her suspicions, it wasn’t proof that he’d had anything to do with Gabriela’s death.
Standing behind and to either side of Callahan were three of de Souza’s teenaged bodyguards, weapons in hand but pointed at the floor.
For now.
De Souza himself sat a few feet away from her, slumped in a battered armchair near the one and only window, which was really nothing more than a ragged rectangular hole in the wall that overlooked the favela and the jumble of high-rises beyond.
“I only agreed to see you out of curiosity,” he said.
He was a lanky guy, much younger than she had expected, with dark, curly hair and a wispy black goatee on his angular face. He wore only bright red boxers, and several nasty knife scars were visible on his chest and abdomen.
“About what?” she asked.
“Why you would assume I know anything about Gabriela Zuada?”
Callahan saw no reason to beat around the bush. “There are people who think you may be responsible for her death.”
His eyebrows raised. “Are you one of these people?”
Callahan shrugged. “Let’s just say I have more questions than answers.”
“I have a question myself. Why is the U.S. State Department so interested in something that happened on Brazilian soil?”
Callahan had brought her credentials with her, just in case, and de Souza’s bodyguards had found them when they searched her backpack. They’d also found her Glock 20 and immediately took possession of it.
She didn’t yet know the answer to de Souza’s question, so she fell back on a reliable lie. “We’re here at the request of the governor of Sao Paulo. The United States is always happy to assist in cases of international importance.”
“International importance?” De Souza shook his head in disgust, then gestured at the television. “I suppose with the world falling apart around us, it shouldn’t surprise me that both of our governments are distracted by the death of a self-righteous demagogue. The Middle East and central Asia are about to implode, Africa right behind them, yet all eyes are here on Brazil. What happened to our precious Gabriela?”
“You don’t seem very upset by her death.”
“Why would I be?”
“I’m told she worked for you at one time. As a courier.”
De Souza shrugged. “A lot of people work for me. They live, they die. It’s nothing unusual around here.”
Callahan thought about the dead man in the alley and wondered if he’d worked for de Souza, too. “But Gabriela spoke out against you. Condemned you for selling drugs to children. Her boyfriend says you threatened her more than once.”
“Ahh, yes, the demon de Souza. I make no secret of what I do or what I believe, and to some that means I should be feared and reviled. I’ve never understood why people are so quick to condemn those who don’t buy into their feeble ideology. The truth is, the only threat I pose is philosophical. I’m nothing more than a man who fills a need, with no more power than any other human being. Including Gabriela.”
“And you never considered her a threat?”
“To what? My luxurious lifestyle?”
Callahan glanced around her again. He did have a point, but she pushed anyway. “I’m told she was pressuring the police to clean up the favela.”
De Souza shook his head. “A useless publicity stunt. The police know their place, just as I do. And they’ll soon have a lot more to worry about than this little piece of hell.”
“Meaning what?”
“Look around you, Agent Callahan.” He waved a hand toward the hole in the wall. “It’s obvious to anyone paying attention that the dragon is loose and systematically taking control of our planet.”
“The dragon?”
“Satan. Lucifer. The King of Babylon. The God of This Age. We’re surrounded by his influence-people dying in the streets, endless wars, the constant promise of terrorism and nuclear holocaust. The gates of hell are about to open and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. I’d be a fool to align myself with anyone who might try.”
De Souza smiled now, revealing that his left front tooth had been carefully painted with shiny black enamel, an inverted white cross at its center. “I may be easily corrupted, senhorita, but that doesn’t make me a fool any more than it means I killed Gabriela Zuada.”
“So do you think Gabriela was murdered?”
He shrugged. “You’d know more about that than I would.”
“Then if it wasn’t you, can you think of anyone else who might want to harm her? Someone who practices the occult?”
De Souza straightened himself in his chair, then leaned toward her.
“Something’s stirring in the air, Agent Callahan. Do you feel it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Dark forces at work. Stronger than ever. Dangerous, malevolent forces that may well be responsible for what happened to our sweet Gabriela.” He paused. “I’d advise you to tread lightly, querida. Because you never know who’s watching.”
Callahan shivered slightly. Then, remembering that she was a skeptic who valued rational thinking over superstitious voodoo, she got hold of herself. The only dark forces at work here were man-made, and if Gabriela had been murdered, it was by human hands.
But not de Souza’s. She was convinced of that now. He might be the obvious suspect, and he might not hesitate to kill a rival, but it was clear that he had considered Gabriela a harmless trifle and had neither the motive nor the desire to go after her.
In other words, Callahan was wasting her time.
“Thanks for the advice,” she said.
De Souza studied her for a long moment, assessing her, but not in the same lewd way as the other men (and boys) she’d encountered in Sao Paulo. There was nothing lascivious in the look at all. And that only compounded her uneasiness.
He checked his watch. “You’d better return to your bus, senhorita. They’re scheduled to leave soon. And once they’re gone, I’m afraid I cannot guarantee your safety.”
Then he smiled again, running the tip of his tongue along the edge of that shiny black-and-white tooth.
“Va com Deus,” he said.
Go with God.